On-premises upgrade checklist for Pega Infinity release 8.4.2 and later for other application servers and databases
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This checklist details the upgrade requirements and actions that are required during an upgrade of all your environments that are running Pega Infinity release 8.4.2 or later on application servers and databases other than Tomcat and PostgreSQL. Use this checklist to plan and complete your upgrade process steps and stages.
Prepare for the upgrade
During the Pega Infinity upgrade process, you perform and manage all the upgrade tasks as described in this checklist.
| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | Become familiar with the upgrade process by reviewing On-premises upgrade process for Pega Infinity release 8.4.2 and later for other application servers and databases. | |
| ⬜ | Learn about the benefits of keeping current with Pega, read about the latest features, and learn about any features or processes that Pega has identified with upgrade impact, by exploring: | |
| ⬜ | If applicable, run the Pega-provided pre-upgrade checker on your applications to ensure that Pega Infinity seamlessly integrates with your applications. Examples of upgrade checkers include:
For Pega Platform, Pega provides a pre-upgrade checker that identifies the rules that you have customized in your application to understand the impact of the upgrade; you are expected to use the results to retrofit these rules after the upgrade. As a best practice, do not overwrite or customize Pega rules. For more information, see Pega Upgrade Tools. | |
| ⬜ | Maintain a standard, consistent DevOps approach so that you can assess the effect of the latest Pega Platform and Pega industry application capabilities and plan your new feature adoption strategy across your environments after you upgrade to Pega Infinity. This standardization includes the following structure:
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| ⬜ | Review these application development best practices to ensure that your background processing takes only several minutes to complete: | |
| ⬜ | Plan for your upgrade journey in an upcoming sprint. Upgrades of your production environment are typically verified and completed within two weeks of initiation. During the sprint, do not promote any new application changes to the production environment. |
Start the Basic upgrade process
The Basic upgrade process enables you to upgrade your Pega industry applications to the latest Pega Infinity version with minimum disruption.In this phase you initiate the upgrade process by cloning a staging environment according to your database vendor's tooling. You prepare this environment for upgrade testing using test data, test cases, and any operators as needed.
| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | If necessary, plan a maintenance communication with your application users around your schedule for the upgrade. | |
| ⬜ | Clone the database of your staging environment according to your database vendor's tooling. | |
| ⬜ | Upgrade your staging environment. For details, see the appropriate upgrade guides for your industry applications and for Pega Platform. | |
| ⬜ | If you have existing web mashups, create new mashup code on the upgraded, cloned staging environment. For more information about migrating mashups, see Migrating existing mashups. |
Validate the Basic upgrade by using application testing
In this stage, you test all applications in your upgraded, cloned staging environment. You should also plan to make any critical changes if recommended as part of the upgrade impact assessment that you complete in the Prepare for the upgrade stage.This phase does not include adopting features of the new version of the Pega Infinity platform which are done later, during the Feature Adoption phase of the upgrade process.
| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | For each application, import the following applicable testing assets into the upgraded, cloned staging environment:
The clone maintains your application and data from the staging environment. Unless you need them for testing, you do not need to clone the following artifacts:
While you must ensure that appropriate test data exists in the staging environment, copying production data is not allowed. | |
| ⬜ | For each application, sync selected rules from the production environment to the upgraded, cloned staging environment. For more information, see Syncing rules between the production environment and the upgraded, cloned, staging environment in Deployment Manager. | |
| ⬜ | If applicable, run the Pega-provided Customer Service post-upgrade checker on your applications to ensure seamless integration. For more information, see Pega Customer Service Upgrade Checker and "Checking for rule overrides in Pega Customer Service" in Pega Customer Service and Pega Sales Automation Upgrade Guide. | |
| ⬜ | For each application, perform application compatibility testing and validation on the cloned, upgraded staging environment. Ensure you have test coverage for the following Pega capabilities and configurations:
Helpful resources include: | |
| ⬜ | For each application, make required changes to address issues identified during the testing. The required rules and data changes include addressing critical security-related enhancements, as well as problematic configurations identified by the pre-upgrade assessment tools in the Prepare for the upgrade stage. In later stages of the upgrade process, you promote these changes accordingly, depending on the stage. | |
| ⬜ | Create an upgrade pipeline in Deployment Manager to migrate rules from the upgraded cloned, staging environment to the production environment for each application. The upgrade pipeline includes two product rules that contain any upgrade fixes and confidence testing assets along with all required data instances to test the application. For more information about configuring upgrade pipelines, see Configuring upgrade pipelines. | |
| ⬜ | Optionally, if you are migrating existing mashups and want to access them during the upgrade, create a product rule that contains the mashup and promote it to the production environment. For details, see Migrating existing mashups. | |
| ⬜ | If you are migrating existing web mashups, add them to the application product rule in the upgrade pipeline and promote the product rule to production. For details, see Migrating existing mashups. |
Perform a Basic upgrade of your production environment
In this phase, you upgrade your production environment after you prepare the environment for the upgrade. After the upgrade, you must perform any required post-upgrade steps that your application requires.| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | Before the upgrade, perform the following steps that apply on the production environment:
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| ⬜ | Upgrade your production environment. For more information, see the appropriate upgrade guide for your industry applications and for Pega Platform. | |
| ⬜ | After the upgrade, perform any required steps applicable to your application. For details, see the appropriate upgrade guide for your industry applications and for Pega Platform. | |
| ⬜ | Import any fixes that you identified during the Validate the Basic upgrade using application testing stage using your upgrade pipeline in Deployment Manager. For details, see Migrating upgrade fixes to production. |
Perform a Basic upgrade of non-production environments
During this stage, you upgrade all non-production environments during your defined maintenance window after completing the upgrade on the production environment.| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | Perform any pre-upgrade and post-upgrade tasks on the non-production environments as outlined in the Perform a Basic upgrade of your production environment stage. | |
| ⬜ | Upgrade each non-production environment. For more information, see the appropriate upgrade guide for your industry applications and for Pega Platform. | |
| ⬜ | After every non-production environment upgrade, for each application, import any required rules and data changes discovered during the Validate the Basic upgrade by using application testing stage, during application compatibility testing and validation from your upgraded, cloned staging environment. To promote these changes by using Deployment Manager, review Migrating application upgrade changes to non-production environments. | |
| ⬜ | Log in to each upgraded, non-production environment and verify that your application is working as expected. |
Maintain Feature Adoption in your environments
At this point, the Basic upgrade phase is complete and the Feature Adoption phase begins. Use this phase as part of your standard application development life cycle with which you complete optional post-upgrade steps, recommended configuration changes, verification steps, or adopting new features in your application using the standard DevOps process.| Stakeholder | Required actions with each stage | Date completed |
|---|---|---|
| ⬜ | Complete post-upgrade tasks as detailed in the upgrade guides for your industry application and for Pega Platform. | |
| ⬜ | In your development environment, enable and integrate the new features of the latest release that you identified during the Prepare for the upgrade stage of the upgrade process into each of your relevant applications. Use your existing deployment pipeline with a minimum number of development, staging, and production environments and use the pipeline to promote the latest application functionality to your production environments. For details, see one of the following:
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