High-level steps involved in the Fast Upgrade process

The IBM Marketing Software Fast upgrade process is introduced to help complete the upgrade process in a short time so that you encounter less downtime on your production environment. Also, Fast upgrade process will get executed on clean 11.0 environment, so users existing environment will remain untouched.

Installing a clean 11.0 environment

Procedure

  1. You must set up a clean 11.0 environment with the same products installed as in the old version.
  2. You can setup a clean 11.0 environment either on the same hardware or a different hardware. We recommend that you setup a clean 11.0 environment on a different hardware. If installed on the same hardware you must configure the JVM memory options for the new environment and keep sufficient disk space, memory and CPU for the older versions as well as for the 11.0 version.
  3. A clean 11.0 environment installation should be done with the stack combination used in the old version. For example, if your existing 8.6 version is installed on the RHEL operating system with the DB2 database, then a clean 11.0 should be installed on same operating system flavor and same database vendor. But, note that you must use the supported third party software - operating systems, application servers, database, and so on versions that 11.0 supports.
  4. Ensure that the 11.0 application is up and running.

Migrating the system database

About this task

The steps underneath are database specific, you may consult your DBA to complete them:

Procedure

  1. You must take a backup of the system tables from the old version.
  2. You must also take a backup of the system tables from the 11.0 version.
  3. Stop the clean installed 11.0 application.
  4. Clean up the system tables of the 11.0 clean applications. This involves deleting all the tables, constraints, indexes, and so on from the system tables. Alternatively, you can create new database schemas to migrate system data from the old version to the 11.0 version.
  5. Restore the database backup from the older version system tables to the 11.0 application system tables for all the required products into the respective database schema.

Executing the Fast Upgrade

Procedure

  1. You must execute the Marketing Platform upgrade process first. In case IBM Campaign is part of the installed suite then execute the Fast Upgrade for IBM Campaign. Only after that execute the other fast upgrades.
  2. Contact Technical Support if you encounter errors in the Fast Upgrade process.

Post Fast Upgrade

Procedure

  1. After completing the Fast Upgrade, you must execute the configuration steps for every product. Refer to the respective product section in this guide for details.
  2. Perform a UAT on the upgraded environment. The old version can be shutdown once the UAT passes and the new 11.0 environment can then be used in production.