Preparing to upgrade to 24.3

For detailed upgrade steps, see Upgrade steps.

• Decide if you are going to do a rolling upgrade, and if so, which model. See About rolling upgrades.
• Review the release documentation for important information related to this upgrade.

• Review and update your internally-documented upgrade playbook.

  Many customers have an internal "playbook" developed with Venafi Professional Services with instructions and policies you need to follow for upgrading your Venafi servers. See if there are new options available or new requirements that need to be documented in your playbook. Review this entire chapter, and compare with your playbook to see where updates may be necessary.

• Schedule a maintenance window.

  Most customers use a change management process that requires a scheduled maintenance window for making changes to the production environment. Your change management process may include creating a change request with documents potential risks, as well as risk-mitigation steps you will take to ensure all affected people are aware of the change.

  Usually these change requests require an approval process, so give yourself plenty of lead time if these requirements apply to you.

• Download Trust Protection Platform version 24.3. For specific steps see Downloading the latest version of Venafi Trust Protection Platform.

• If you are using an answer file, you may need to update it before upgrading. For details on the current answer file schema, see Creating and using answer files.

  We recommend you create a new answer file using version 24.3 for use in scripted installations and upgrades.

• Upgrade and test in non-production environments.

  Especially when you plan to change features, or if current feature deprecations affect your environment, we highly recommend that you test the upgraded version of Trust Protection Platform against a recent copy of your production database to identify any issues before you go live.

  WARNING!  Never use your production database in lower environments (dev, test, sandbox, etc.)! Always use a recent copy of your production database in lower environments.