Here are some quick tips that are not explicitly written into the documentation that I've seen trip users (including myself) up -
1- Backups backups backups.... Make sure you have a bullet proof roll back strategy before you start in case anything goes wrong.
I've seen first hand cases where things like power outages occurign midway through an upgrade in places leave the system in an unsalvageable state. Ensure you have a way of getting all hosts in the deployment back to the state they were in before the update started.
2- Test everything you need have working is working before you start the upgrade. You need to be confident you have a health environment before you start the upgrade. Often we'll see users identify major issues after an upgrade, we roll the system back to the backups before the upgrade was applied only to find the issue was still present before the update took place.
3 - Consider if there are any post-installation configuration updates that might impact the upgrade. eg. Was TLS/SSL manually configured after the SDW finished. Changes like this should be reverted so that the state of the system is what the SDW expects.
- Test : Make sure everything you need to have work is working
- Backup : Put a safety net into place. Should anything go wrong you will always be able to get back to working state
- Take stock of your deployment : Revert changes that were manually introduced that might stop the SDW performing updates
- Follow the docuemntation : Go through the docuemtnation and follow it to actaulyl perform the update
- Test... again... : Make sure everything you need to have working is still working
- Make a go/no-go decision : if everything is working you can keep the current setup and remove backups, ifs not working you need to decide if you troubleshoot or rollback
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