Preparing for the Manual Upgrade

As a system administrator, there is a series of preparatory steps you must take before upgrading your system.

Tip! This section contains information relevant to manually upgrading your system. If you are searching for information relevant to container-based systems, see Container-Based System Upgrade - Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition.

This page includes the following:

Checking for Incompatibilities

Before upgrading, you need to check for incompatibilities between two consecutive versions. Only new features that might lead to compatibility issues or that should be taken into account when upgrading are listed. All new features of a given AE version are described in full in What's New Automic Automation v24.

Requirements and Considerations

The best way to prepare for an upgrade is to know which requirements your system needs to meet before starting the upgrade process as well as which instruments and support you have available:

  • You can request assistance from consultants or even 24/7 support when you upgrade your system. Our experts are trained to provide excellent support when action is taken in critical and sensitive areas of your AE system. Contact your Account Manager or Technical Support as soon as you know when you are going to start the upgrading process. For more information, see Files to Aid Technical Support. Also, make sure you have your login data for https://downloads.automic.com/.

  • Read the Release Notes of the relevant Automation Engine version paying special attention to changes that affect your installation.

  • Use the compatibility matrix to check the System Requirements.

  • Decide on the type of upgrade: backup / restore the whole environment (in-place upgrade) or duplicate the environment (parallel upgrade) and decide if agents will be updated with the Automation Engine.

  • Determine a point in time for upgrading the core components. Note that the Automation Engine must temporarily be stopped which interrupts processing. For this reason, it is best to determine a time during which only a few activities take place. The duration of the upgrading process depends on the size of your AE system.

  • If the database scheme derives from the standard, the AE Scripts must be adapted accordingly.

  • Upgrade a test system first. This experience will help you estimate the required time to upgrade your productive system.

  • During the upgrade process, you (administrators) require access to the AE database and all computers with AE core components (such as the Automation Engine, utilities, etc.). If you work in a distributed Server environment, you must have access to all computers affected. Ensure that the responsible administrators are available and that the login data (such as passwords) is correct.

  • Test your workflows in the test system before upgrading the production system.

  • Information security services, such as the TLS/SSL implementation of the ServiceManager, require features provided by the CAPKI package. You need to install CAPKI on all computers in which the Automation Engine processes or the ServiceManager and any of its clients will run.

    More information:

Important! The communication Automation Engine, the Automic Web Interface, the Java API, and the Proxy Client as well as between the AE and the Windows, UNIX, and Java Agents uses TLS/SSL through a secure WebSocket (WSS). These components establish a connection with the Java communication process (JCP) and/or the REST process (REST). These server processes use trusted certificates to prove their identity to other communication partners, such as Agents.

Make sure you are familiar with the TLS/SSL and certificate implementation before installing and/or upgrading the respective component. For more information, see TLS/SSL Considerations for Automic Automation.

More information:

Non-TLS/SSL Agents, such as BS2000, NSK, OS/400, VMS, and z/OS, still connect to a communication process (CP). The communication between a TLS/SSL and a non-TLS/SSL Agent can be established using the TLS Gateway.

Denying New Job Starts

Make sure that users cannot start new jobs nor change processing. To do so, do the following:

  • Inform all affected persons about the upgrading process and make sure that processing is not changed.

  • Create a user group that explicitly denies all actions and assign all users to this group.

    • If the Revision Report is activated in your AE system, the assignment to the user group must be made in the User object because the tab is locked in the user group object in this case.

Important!

  • Processing must not be changed during the whole upgrading procedure. If a problem occurs in your system environment during a particular step, you can either restore the AE database or directly use the original one if you made a copy. In doing so, there is almost no risk for your processing.

  • Statistical data, reports, and modifications made to Variable object and Sync object contents are lost.

See also: