Program Database - Switching to Firebird 3

10-Strike Network Monitor Pro includes and uses the Firebird database software. Starting from the v6.2 of the program, Firebird version 3 is used in the installation package. When a new program instance is installed on a server (without running older version of 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro on it), Firebird v3 will be installed in this case. If your server already contains 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro installed and working with older Firebird 2.5.x, the database version 2.5.9 will automatically be installed (it is the latest version in the 2.5.x line). In this case, you can switch to Firebird 3 only manually.

There are the following reasons of why we recommend you to switch to Firebird 3:

• The previous version 2.5.x will no longer be developed, supported, and updated by the vendor.
• Firebird 3 works faster because of using all CPU cores and better caching.
• The 8-symbol password length limitation is removed in Firebird 3.

You can find more details about the new version in Release Notes on the database developers' web site.

How to Migrate to Firebird 3

For switching your existing program database to Firebird 3, please do the following.

1. Create a backup copy of your monitoring database. You can do this on the program settings window, the Database section. Please check that the backup copy is good and the database can be recovered from it.
2. Close the program.
3. Stop the 10-Strike Network Monitor Watchdog service.
4. Stop the 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro Service.
5. Open the c:\Program Files (x86)\10-Strike Network Monitor Pro\firebird\bin\ folder and run the uninstall.bat file. After that, open the list of services in the system Service Manager, and check that all services with the "Firebird" word in their names have disappeared. (There are two such services: Firebird Server and Firebird Guardian.)
6. Delete the c:\Program Files (x86)\10-Strike Network Monitor Pro\firebird\ folder with all its content. If you have used specific database parameters and changed the firebird.conf file, save it for configuring the newer version of the database software (almost all the parameters are the same).
7. Start the new installation package of 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro (the v6.2 and newer). The installer can stop on the last step (starting the monitoring service). This is normal because the monitoring database is still in the old format and the monitoring service cannot connect to it. You can leave the installer here and perform the next step.
8. Recover the monitoring database from the backup copy into the new Firebird version. Please refer to the Database backup creation and restoring topic. Copy the restored database to the location of the previous database and restart the Firebird Server service.
9. Please note, that if you had specified a custom path to the database file NETMONITOR.FDB in the aliases.conf file, you will need to specify this path again in the new configuration file which is now called databases.conf (in the c:\Program Files (x86)\10-Strike Network Monitor Pro\firebird\ folder).
10. Restart the 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro Service. It can be in the starting state after the program installation moment and you need to just kill the NMProSvc.exe process in the Task Manager in order to restart it. Please check that the service has the Running state now.

The database migration process is finished after that.

How to Install and Configure Firebird 3 Server Manually

For manual installing the Firebird 3 database to a custom location, please download the installation package from the official web site. 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro supports both 64- and 32-bit versions of the database software (using the 32-bit client library GDS32.dll in the program folder).

Further, please perform the following steps.

1. Unpack the database archive to a new folder. For example, c:\program files\fb3.
2. Open this folder.
3. Copy the database configuration file firebird.conf from 10-Strike Network Monitor Pro's installation package to the Firebird folder.
4. Start a system console (cmd) and switch to the Firebird folder using the cd command (cd "c:\program files\fb3").
5. Run the command: instsvc install -a
6. Run the command: instreg install
7. Run the command: gsec -user sysdba -passw 1 -add SYSDBA -pw masterke
8. If an error occurred on the previous command, then run: gsec -user sysdba -passw 1 -modify SYSDBA -pw masterke
9. Run the command: instsvc start

Please use this Firebird installation method only when necessary if you know what you are doing. For other cases, we recommend using the program installation package network-monitor-pro.exe which performs all the database configuration tasks automatically.

What to Do after Firebird 3 Installation

After switching to Firebird 3, run the graphic console (the main monitoring application) and re-create users (if you had created them before the migration). To do this, go to the Users and rights section of the program settings, delete all users in the list, and create them again.

We also recommend you to change the default superuser password from SYSDBA to a new one. Click the Database connection settings... button and specify a new password in the Change the database root user password field.