1. If you are going to check for ANYTHING (in this case the master key) do it FIRST!!!! Don't make me wait for 20 minutes, ask for my key, then crash and make me start over!

2. Why do we need a backup anyway? Can't you just tell users that before an upgrade (assuming you are VM) take a snapshot of your server and have your DBAs take a backup of your DB. Make the upgrade write to a log file and BEFORE restoring, send that file to ME support? I get that backups can use used to restore to a different to make a new environment (like a DEV or QA copy) but make that separate from the upgrade process.

3. Don't force users to do something like this Master Key unless its a separate piece. I follow pretty closely and I didn't see anything about what to do to set your keys or prepare for that. My DBAs and even support couldn't figure it out. The solution was to nuke the keys to get it to work. How about working with Support in the first place to give detailed/accurate instructions PRIOR?

4. Tell us ahead of time if an upgrade is going to FORCE a backup so I don't do it twice using current methods. Again, it takes a while. Either let me backup on my own (preferred - my risk) or make the upgrade do it all the time so I don't waste 20-30 minutes on this process duplicating it.

OK. That's my rant. I WAS able to successfully get my upgrade to 9414 from 9409 and hopefully moving forward there will only be improvements in the process. It HAS gotten better and I think you for that. Now if we can address backups, we might be on solid ground!

Thanks