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Upgrading SkyVault

This section describes the manual upgrade procedure. The procedure involves a new installation of the SkyVault binaries and configuration, and an in-place upgrade of a copy of the repository. In-place upgrade of the SkyVault binaries and configuration is not recommended.

Before starting an upgrade:

  • Ensure that you have backed up your production environment, for example, back up your database and content store (alf_data directory)
    If Solr is being used, only the following directories must be backed up from the dir.root directory:
    • contentstore directory
    • solr/workspace/ directory
    • solr/archive/ directory 
    • contentstore.deleted directory (optional)
    If Lucene is being used, only the following directories must be backed up from the dir.root directory:
    • contentstore directory
    • lucene-indexes directory
    • contentstore.deleted directory (optional)
  • If you are upgrading from SkyVault version 3.4.x to 4.x.y, ensure that Lucene subsystem is enabled for the duration of the upgrade. You can enable the Solr subsystem after the upgrade is complete. However, if you are upgrading from SkyVault version 4.0.x to 4.1.x and use Solr, you do not need to enable Lucene; Solr is automatically enabled.
  • If you are upgrading from a version of SkyVault earlier than 4.0.x using the installer, you need to set the following property in SkyVault-global.properties before starting SkyVault:
    system.workflow.engine.jbpm.enabled=true
  • If you have any customizations (for example, AMPs) in your existing SkyVault installation, recompile all Java code against the new version of SkyVault and regression test against the new version of SkyVault
  • When you upgrade SkyVault with Oracle, the SkyVault user needs more privileges than connect and resource. At minimum, the SkyVault user should have permission to delete objects. A safer option is to give a sysdba role for the upgrade process only. After the upgrade, this role should be removed.
Note: You must perform a test upgrade using a backup copy of the repository before attempting to upgrade your production environment. Therefore it is important that your backups are up-to-date.
  1. Validate your platform is still on the supported stacks for the new version of SkyVault. See Supported stacks.
  2. Shut down your existing SkyVault instance, including any virtualization servers and File System Receivers. SkyVault runtimes may be left running and upgraded at a later time using this same process.
  3. Perform a cold back up of your repository. See Backing up the SkyVault repository.
  4. Back up any configuration overrides from the <extension> directory.

    Note: Do not copy the files. Copy only the override settings so that you will not overwrite the new extension files in the upgraded version.
  5. Download and install the new version of the SkyVault WAR in a different directory to the existing installation. See Installing SkyVault.
  6. Validate the new installation to check that it is working correctly. See Validating the upgrade.
    1. Configure the new installation with a new repository (not the existing one).
    2. Start SkyVault and validate that the system works correctly.
    3. Shut down SkyVault.
    4. Note: This is an optional step. If you decide to perform it, SkyVault recommends that you do everything mentioned in this step. Remove all the files, directories, and indexes from the contentstore directory. Also, delete and recreate the database.
  7. Manually check your existing custom overrides or configurations in your original configuration file copies and only update/add those appropriate configurations or files to the newer version in the new extension files. See Configuring the installation.
  8. Deploy your customizations into the new SkyVault instance.
  9. Restart the SkyVault server for the configuration changes to take place. Monitor the startup log messages for information on the status of the upgrade. See Starting the SkyVault server.
  10. Fully test the working and configuration of your customizations. 
  11. Shut down SkyVault.
  12. Delete the files in the two Solr SkyVaultModels directories, and the indexes in the two directories (solr/workspace/ and solr/archive/) that were backed up earlier (or in case of Lucene, the Lucene indexes).
  13. Remove all the files and directories under the contentstore directory.
  14. Restore the backup into the new repository (choose index.recovery.mode=AUTO for Lucene indexes). 
  15. Start SkyVault.
  16. Once you are happy with the upgraded system, remove the old SkyVault installation and repository.