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Preparation

This section covers steps to complete before making any changes to upgrade a Bravura Security Fabric instance.

It is highly recommended that you:

  1. Carry out research and analysis of your environment to ensure upgrading or patching would be successful.

  2. Design plans for testing, change control, and communication .

  3. Choose your upgrade path / playbook to customize and record your process.

Review and verify

Before upgrading, review and verify information gathered during research and analysis.

Verify operating system and SQL server configuration

Verify that the Windows operating system and database are the same versions and have the same configuration as existing nodes. Review:

Verify system requirements

For Bravura Security Fabric 12.6+, the following are required:

  • Python 3.11.2+.

  • Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server

  • .NET Core Hosting Bundle 8.0.x and

  • .NET Desktop Runtime 8.0.x

  • Supported database management systems

For details for 12.7-12.8 see Server requirements.

For older versions see:

Verify product build version

The Bravura Security Fabric build version should match the version on the primary node.

Check availability of database credentials

Ensure that there is DBA-level access to all databases both to take backups and to apply the backups.

Check availability to database backup locations

Make sure suitable space exists to hold the database backups

Check ability to transfer database backups to secondary sites

Ensure that its known how the database backups will be transferred between the nodes.

Review customizations

Confirm customizations that will need to be ported.

Run the Instance customizations report:

  1. Log into Bravura Security Fabric as an user with the "Run reports" administrative privilege.

  2. Click Manage reports > Reports > System operation > Instance customizations.

Review previous changes to list all custom components.

As discussed in research and analysis, review:

Note

Keep the old version of Python to uninstall the old version of Bravura Security Fabric. If the old version of Python is removed, then the location for the new version must be added into system path.

Run the installer for pre-upgrade checks

Run setup to check for errors or warnings. The steps vary according to your upgrade path/playbook:

12.3 Release train pre-upgrade checks - For versions 12.3 or earlier, upgrading to 12.4 or newer.

Before you start the upgrade or patching process, start the setup program so that it can perform pre-upgrade checks:

  1. Copy the installation package to all application servers.

  2. Check out administrator access as required.

    Ensure access to <ADMIN> accounts.

  3. Run setup with the latest MSI.

    Select the instance you want to upgrade or patch, then click the Upgrade link for that instance.

    If the instance you want is not listed, ensure the instance.cfg file exists in the root folder of the instance on the disk. This file is a text file containing the following entries, which you would have to modify to fit your own instance:

    [Config]  
INSTANCENAME=bsf1220  
INSTANCEDESCRIPTION=BSF 12.2.0 with MSSQL Standard backend 
REGISTRY=SOFTWARE\Bravura Security\Bravura Security Fabric\default

  4. Confirm that pre-upgrade checks pass.

    The database configuration check verifies:

    • The current windows user is the same user that is used for Windows authentication by the instance.

    • The SQL server login for the windows user still has the same default database that is used by the instance.

    • The connectivity to the database that the instance uses.

  5. Abort the upgrade.

  6. Ensure all health checks pass on all nodes. Confirm that:

    1. Windows updates are applied.

    2. There are no critical problems in the Windows event log.

    3. There are no critical problems in Bravura Security Fabric health checks.

    4. The node has at least 50GB free.

    5. The database server has at least 50GB free.

    6. The database server has at least 25GB free for the transaction log.

Queue Flush pre-upgrade checks - For versions 12.4 or later, upgrading to 12.4.1 or later

Before you start the upgrade or patching process, start the setup program so that it can perform pre-upgrade checks:

  1. Copy the installation package to all application servers.

  2. Check out administrator access as required.

    Ensure access to <ADMIN> accounts.

  3. Run setup with the latest MSI.

    Select the instance you want to upgrade or patch, then click the Upgrade link for that instance.

    If the instance you want is not listed, ensure the instance.cfg file exists in the root folder of the instance on the disk. This file is a text file containing the following entries, which you would have to modify to fit your own instance:

    [Config]  
INSTANCENAME=bsf1220  
INSTANCEDESCRIPTION=BSF 12.2.0 with MSSQL Standard backend  
REGISTRY=SOFTWARE\Bravura Security\Bravura Security Fabric\default

  4. Confirm the correct upgrade process is triggered. Verify the following options are available:

    • Perform a standard upgrade by flushing queue files beforehand (this may take some time)

    • Delete queue files and accept the data lost and/or desynchronization that is extremely likely to occur

  5. Confirm that pre-upgrade checks pass.

    The database configuration check verifies:

    • The current windows user is the same user that is used for Windows authentication by the instance.

    • The SQL server login for the windows user still has the same default database that is used by the instance.

    • The connectivity to the database that the instance uses.

  6. Abort the upgrade.

  7. Ensure all health checks pass on all nodes. Confirm that:

    1. Windows updates are applied.

    2. There are no critical problems in the Windows event log.

    3. There are no critical problems in Bravura Security Fabric health checks.

    4. The node has at least 50GB free.

    5. The database server has at least 50GB free.

    6. The database server has at least 25GB free for the transaction log.

Queue Delete pre-installation checks -For versions 12.4 or later, upgrading to 12.4.1 or later

Before you start the upgrade or patching process, start the setup program so that it can perform pre-upgrade checks:

  1. Copy the installation package to all application servers.

  2. Check out administrator access as required.

    Ensure access to <ADMIN> accounts.

  3. Run setup with the latest MSI.

    Select the instance you want to upgrade or patch, then click the Upgrade link for that instance.

    If the instance you want is not listed, ensure the instance.cfg file exists in the root folder of the instance on the disk. This file is a text file containing the following entries, which you would have to modify to fit your own instance:

    [Config]  
INSTANCENAME=bsf1220  
INSTANCEDESCRIPTION=BSF 12.2.0 with MSSQL Standard backend  
REGISTRY=SOFTWARE\<Company Directory>\<Product Directory>\default

  4. Confirm the correct upgrade process is triggered. Verify the following options are available:

    • Perform a standard upgrade by flushing queue files beforehand (this may take some time)

    • Delete queue files and accept the data lost and/or desynchronization that is extremely likely to occur

  5. Confirm that pre-upgrade checks pass.

    The database configuration check verifies:

    • The current windows user is the same user that is used for Windows authentication by the instance.

    • The SQL server login for the windows user still has the same default database that is used by the instance.

    • The connectivity to the database that the instance uses.

  6. Abort the upgrade.

  7. Ensure all health checks pass on all nodes. Confirm that:

    1. Windows updates are applied.

    2. There are no critical problems in the Windows event log.

    3. There are no critical problems in Bravura Security Fabric health checks.

    4. The node has at least 50GB free.

    5. The database server has at least 50GB free.

    6. The database server has at least 25GB free for the transaction log.

Rolling update pre-installation checks - For version 12.4 or later, upgrading to 12.4.x or later

Before you start the upgrade or patching process, start the setup program so that it can perform pre-upgrade checks:

  1. Copy the installation package to all application servers.

  2. Check out administrator access as required.

    Ensure access to <ADMIN> accounts.

  3. Run setup with the latest MSI.

    Select the instance you want to upgrade or patch, then click the Upgrade link for that instance.

    If the instance you want is not listed, ensure the instance.cfg file exists in the root folder of the instance on the disk. This file is a text file containing the following entries, which you would have to modify to fit your own instance:

    [Config]  
INSTANCENAME=bsf1240  
INSTANCEDESCRIPTION=BSF 12.4.0 with MSSQL Standard backend  
REGISTRY=SOFTWARE\<Company Directory>\<Product Directory>\default

  4. Confirm the correct upgrade process is triggered.

  5. Confirm that pre-upgrade checks pass.

    The database configuration check verifies:

    • The current windows user is the same user that is used for Windows authentication by the instance.

    • The SQL server login for the windows user still has the same default database that is used by the instance.

    • The connectivity to the database that the instance uses.

  6. Abort the upgrade.

  7. Ensure all health checks pass on all nodes. Confirm that:

    1. Windows updates are applied.

    2. There are no critical problems in the Windows event log.

    3. There are no critical problems in Bravura Security Fabric health checks.

    4. The node has at least 50GB free.

    5. The database server has at least 50GB free.

    6. The database server has at least 25GB free for the transaction log.

Services are stopped during the runtime install portion of the pre-upgrade checks.

It is recommended that you run pre-install checks on each node sequentially to avoid downtime of the full environment.

Verify current instance versions

To determine if the current version and version/build that is being upgraded to is compatible for rolling upgrade, check setup.log for the message Replication queues are compatible and will be preserved.

In this section: