As with any production system, executing an upgrade for Commander® works best when you employ careful planning and processes. Doing so ensures you have notified users of expected outages, includes working with a staging or development system, understanding how to best interact with Snow Software® Technical Support to overcome an obstacle, and have a known good configuration to which you can roll back in the event of unexpected issues.
Notifying Users
Whenever upgrading any system, it's best to let your users know in advance so they aren't surprised by the service not being available when they need it. Typical Commander upgrades take about an hour from start to finish if you are following the best practices outlined here, and keeping up to date with each release.
Snow Software recommends updating the Service Portal Message Of The Day 36 hours to a week in advance of performing the upgrade to advise users.
- Under the Configuration menu, choose System.
- Switch to the Portal tab.
- Enter your message in the Service Portal Message of the Day field and click Save Settings.
Here's a sample message:
To serve you better, a software upgrade has been scheduled for 17:00 “ 18:00 (EST)Thursday, September 11, 2021. If you have any questions or concerns, or notice anything unusual once service has been restored, please let the system administrator know at 'admin@yourcompany.com'.
Additionally, send an email notifying users who may not login to the Service Portal during the period the Message Of The Day is active.
Staging Upgrade Process
Users rarely encounter Commander upgrade failures, but when failures occur the problem often lies with information in the database being in an unexpected format. As such Snow Software recommends maintaining a staging environment so you can test upgrades prior to upgrading your production environment.
Your Commander license permits the upkeep of a staging environment, but you should let your Account Manager and/or the Support team know that you have one running. A permanent staging environment is also useful for trying out new workflows or policies, and becoming familiar with new Commander features before implementing them as solutions in your production environment.
If you do not want a persistent staging environment, you can also clone your app server and do a test run, if you are installed using the default Postgres SQL database. Installations against SQL databases will require a bit more work, but can be similarly handled following the procedure below.
- Backup the SQL database.
- Create a new "dummy" database on your SQL Server.
- Install the version of Commander you are currently running against the dummy database. This install will be upgraded as your test. Once you've completed the testing you can destroy the database.
- Stop the Commander Windows service.
- Restore the backup of your SQL database, overwriting the dummy database.
- Restart the Commander Windows service.
- Perform the upgrade.
Optionally, Snow Software Technical Support can also run through the upgrade scenario for you, if you can upload a copy of your database backup to our available FTP server. The lead time for this activity is variable, depending on availability of support resources, so please try and contact support ahead with more than 72 hours business hours notice. Whenever you send us a database, you can choose to
remove private information yourself, or we will do so once we've received it.
Production Upgrade Process
- When required, notify Snow Software Technical Support ahead of your planned upgrade date and time. If needed a support resource can be on standby for your upgrade (during regular business hours based on your geographical location and resource availability).
- Notify users of the outage timeframe for the production system by setting the "Message Of The Day " in the Service Portal and by emailing users who do not log in frequently.
- Backup the associated Commander SQL Database.
- Take a snapshot of your Commander application server
- Download the latest Commander release from the Support Downloads. For legacy versions please contact Support.
- Copy "Commander <version> Installer.zip" to the Commander server and unblock the file before extracting. Remember to run any executable file on the server using Run as Administrator
- Follow the instructions available on our Documentation - Upgrade Commander page to proceed with the remainder of the required necessary steps.
Note: During the upgrade, the Installer will retain the SQL connection, service account settings and port configuration from the previous installation. If the service account password has changed it will need to be updated during the install process and credentials in Commander will also need to be updated after the upgrade.
Please follow this article if credentials have changed.
Roll Back Process
In the event an upgrade fails, make sure to capture all the information that will be needed by Snow Technical Support to investigate and resolve the upgrade failure, including keeping a backup of the current failed state of the database. Once you have secured all this information, follow the process outlined below to roll back the upgrade.
- Restore the Commander database using the backup taken prior to upgrading.
- Restore the Commander application server to the snapshot taken prior to upgrading.
- Restart the Commander Windows services or reboot the application server.
Post-Upgrade Activity
Once you have successfully upgraded your Commander, remember to complete the following activities:
- Turn off or update the Service Portal Message of the Day.
- Test the most common actions that your users employ when working with Commander. If you experience any failures or unusual behavior, contact Snow Software Technical Support, providing as much detail as possible. This may include diagnostics packages, screenshots, or a backup of the upgraded database itself.
- Take database backups and/or snapshots of the Commander application server.
See Also
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