Upgrade Installation

As a system administrator, you upgrade your existing Automic Automation or Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition system to the latest version.

This page includes the following:

Overview

There are many issues to consider before upgrading your system. Whether you decide to upgrade the different components manually or not, you must be aware of possible incompatibilities between the versions involved and make sure you have all prerequisites in place before starting the upgrade.

This page gives you an overview of these issues and provides links to the corresponding pages, where you can find the information you require in detail.

Important!

It is strongly recommended to carry out the upgrade steps in the order they are listed in the CAPKI documentation, see CAPKI - Securing the ServiceManager.
Never upgrade a productive AE system without having it tested extensively in a separate environment.
If you want to upgrade from an Automation Engine version that is out of maintenance or need help with your upgrade, please contact our support department, see Support.
The Automation Engine and the Automic Web Interface must be on the same major release version and service pack.
If the Automation Engine and Automic Web Interface are bundled together in the same hotfix, they must be on the same major release version, service pack, and hotfix
If you upgrade the AE manually without using ZDU, the WPs in the new version always start in cold mode. If you upgrade by using ZDU, no cold start is required.

Tip: You are prompted to register your product when you login to Client 0 for the first time after the installation or upgrade (if your product was not registered before upgrading). For more information about the benefits you can unlock by registering and instructions on how to do so, see Unlock Premium Value with Broadcom Product Registration.

TLS/SSL Implementation Overview

Important! 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.

The chart below depicts the process required for the TLS/SSL implementation and helps you understand not only the components involved but also the process itself.

Click the image to expand it.

The communication between the Automation Engine and the different components 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), which use trusted certificates to prove their identity to other communication partners, such as Agents.

Therefore, you have to decide which kind of certificates you are going to use to secure the communication in your system. This decision must be considered carefully, as it determines not only how secure the connections are but also the time and effort you have to invest in renewing and deploying the certificates.

Important! TLS/SSL Agents (in containers and on-premises) as well as the TLS Gateway, when used for the Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition, establish a connection to a Gateway API, an ingress, or an HTTPS load balancer, which requires a certificate for external authentication.

Make sure that the address of the Gateway API, ingress, or load balancer is defined on both sides: the Automation Engine and the Agent / TLS Gateway, and that your chosen routing solution has the required external certificates in place. For more information, see Connecting to AWI, the JCP and REST Processes Using an Ingress or a Gateway API.

Related topics:

Checking for Behavior Changes

Checking for possible incompatibilities between two consecutive versions is also a task you have to address before upgrading. Only new features that might lead to compatibility issues or that should be taken into account when upgrading are listed.

Important!

Each page lists the behavior changes and possible incompatibilities between two consecutive versions. If you are skipping one or more versions when upgrading, make sure you go through all the relevant pages. For example, if you upgrade from 24.0 to 24.3, you must read the pages for the 24.0 to 24.1, 24.1 to 24.2 and 24.2 to 24.3 pages.

New features are described in full in the Release Highlights and Release Notes.

More information:

Zero Downtime Upgrade (ZDU)

Important!

Due to substantial technical changes, ZDU is not supported for upgrading from any previous version to 24.4.0. However, you can use ZDU for upgrades from version 24.4.0 to higher versions.
ZDU is not supported either for a first upgrade from a version lower than 24.0 to and Automic Automation version that supports Unicode / UTF-8 (24.0 and higher).

There are significant DB schema and AE message changes that cannot be supported in compatibility or rollback mode. Furthermore, the AE database UTF-8 migration process requires a downtime so that all data is migrated correctly. This step is relevant to avoid an encoding misalignment resulting in corrupted data.

The Zero Downtime Upgrade (ZDU) wizard allows you to carry out an upgrade between major or minor versions of on-premises systems without shutting down the AE system directly from the Automic Web Interface. You can use this function to upgrade between all maintained versions.

It is recommended to use a test environment before installing upgrades on your production system.

Important!The ZDU mode can be used to upgrade your system regardless of its original installation method. This includes systems installed manually, test systems installed via the ONE Installer, and container-based AAKE instances. If you are upgrading a container-based system, please refer to Container-Based System Upgrade - Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition.

More information:

Upgrading Automic Automation Manually

Make sure you have a complete overview of the comprehensive manual upgrade process and that your system meets the necessary requirements.

You also have to make you that you cover the preparation steps, such as migrating your database to UTF-8, denying new job starts, maintaining and duplicating the AE database, and such. For more information, see Preparing for the Manual Upgrade and Migrating AE Databases to UTF-8.

Once you have done that, the Automic Automation manual upgrade comprises the following steps:

Shutting down the system
Duplicating your environment
Upgrading the utility binaries
Upgrading the AE database
Upgrading the remaining binaries (such as AE, Service Manager, server processes, AWI)
Starting up the system
Upgrading the remaining components (such as the agents, CallAPIs and so on)

For detailed instructions on how to manually upgrade your system, see Upgrading an Automation Engine System Manually.

Container-Based System Upgrade - Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition

You can also migrate an existing, manually installed Automic Automation system to a container-based system. This option is available for upgrades from version 12.3 and higher and for migrations from the same version (version 21.0).

You can also to perform a Zero Downtime Upgrade for AAKE instances. To do so, you need to explicitly set the ZDU option in the values.yaml file as follows:

labels:
  features.aa-install-operator/upgrade-mode: zdu

In that case, the install operator handles the Helm upgrade without any downtime. AWI displays the message "System upgrade is in progress." while the ZDU Helm upgrade is in progress, thus signalizing all Users that a system upgrade is ongoing.

More information:

Upgrading the Agents

You can upgrade your Agents either manually or using the Centralized Agent Upgrade (CAU). For more information, see Upgrading the Agents.

Regardless of which method you use to upgrade them, make sure you cover the following issues:

Check the compatibility matrix to see which version is compatible with your system. For more information, see Compatibility Information.
If you are upgrading a GSS Agent to its corresponding TLS/SSL version, make sure you have all security requirements in place so that the Agent can connect to the new Java communication process (JCP).
Also, if you upgrade your Agents manually, make sure that you define the properties that are required to connect to the Java communication process (JCP) and to handle the relevant certificates in the respective Agent INI file. During the Centralized Agent Upgrade (CAU), the system adds the required additional properties to the respective Agent INI file automatically.

More information:

Service Pack and Hotfix Installation

Service packs and/or hotfixes contain valuable corrections and bug fixes between releases. While service pack releases comprise the complete Automic Automation system, hotfixes might be released for a single component.

Make sure you always install the latest service pack or hotfix. Since the most current service pack/hotfix always includes the modifications of previous ones, there is not need to install all previous service packs/hotfixes to have all modifications included in your AE system.

For more information, see Service Pack and Hotfix Installation.

Education

The Broadcom Software Academy provides a wide range of free online trainings. For information about how to navigate through the Academy and on how to register for courses, see Automic Automation Education and Training.

The following course(s) are associated with this topic:

Automic Automation: Upgrading to Version 24