Choose an upgrade strategy

Decide whether to upgrade the entire HCL Compass: environment at the same time or upgrade in phases. Both strategies offer their own advantages and disadvantages. In the end however, all clients and HCL Compass servers must be upgraded to the same release.

Upgrading everything at one time

By upgrading all servers and clients at the same time, you can avoid problems that result from supporting software components from different releases. All features in the new version are available immediately. However, the HCL Compass environment is not available until these tasks are complete:
  • All clients and servers are upgraded
  • All changes are made to the user databases and schema repositories
  • All packages are upgraded
  • All other HCL products are reinstalled.
Any unforeseen problems must be resolved before the environment can be made available to users.

Upgrading in phases

When you upgrade in phases, the HCL Compass environment is down for several short periods and problems are addressed in each phase. This strategy reduces the risk of excessive downtime for the entire environment as a result of unforeseen problems during the upgrade process.
Planning considerations
  • Identify which HCL Compass servers and clients to upgrade first and which to upgrade later. For example, you might want to upgrade the clients and servers for one project team before another team. If some people belong to both project teams, consider whether upgrading their clients affects their ability to work with the user databases for the second project.
  • In the first phase of the process, upgrade any client, server, and vendor database software versions that do no meet the system requirements for the new HCL Compass version.
  • If you plan to raise the feature level, do not raise it during a phased upgrade. Because mismatched feature levels can cause compatibility problems, raise the feature level only after you upgrade all HCL Compass clients and servers.
  • If you have a MultiSite configuration and want complete bidirectional replication between all sites, upgrade all HCL Compass MultiSite synchronization servers and HCL Shipping Servers at the same time. You can upgrade MultiSite environments in phases if the environment can tolerate periods of unidirectional replication. During these periods, some sites do not receive updates from other sites. If you upgrade synchronization and shipping servers in phases, plan carefully to avoid problems that result from systems and data that are not synchronized.