Monday 27 March 2017

Upgrading Previous versions of CQ/AEM to AEM 6.2

Notes on Upgrading to AEM 6.2

We worry a lot when we get a request from client to Upgrade AEM from older version to AEM 6.2. Let us see some important things to be taken care while doing this activity.
Basically we go with product upgrades for two reason. Firstly the support for old versions gets expired. secondly, there are lots of new features and security upgrades in newer versions. AEM upgrade activities should include implementation, regression, full testing, downtime, go-live and production operations etc.

Adobe recommends In place upgrade method for upgrading to AEM Latest versions. This is one of the most tested method whith in Adobe. There are many individual tasks that are performed during an in-place upgrade. Also AEM 6.2  requires JRE 1.7.x (64bit) or later.

Upgrade Steps in High Level

  • Analysis
  • Planning
  • Preparation
  • Execution
  • Post Upgrade Activities

AEM upgrade has two steps basically.
1)Upgrading the repository. (Using crx2oak tool)
2)Upgrading AEM to 6.2.
Note: For AEM 6.1 to 6.2 upgrade, we don't have to do step (1) since we already have OAK(CRX3).

Version dependencies:
AEM versions 5.4 to AEM 6.1 can be directly upgraded to 6.2.
AEM 5.3 and below versions needs to upgrade first to version 5.4 or above, then to AEM 6.2.
AEM 6.1 to 6.2 upgrade can be carried out by just upgrading AEM(Not repository), In all other versions we need to upgrade the repository.

Some precautions. 

If your code is well maintained, and components are granular, you are safe. Ensure the infrastructure team is fully understood the architectural changes. Another success factor is you testing the upgrade activities minimum 3 times in development machines, to ensure all integration, third party APIS work perfectly.




Upgrade Steps:

Preparing the source instance: Here we are ensuring our environment is ready for upgrade.

  •     Create a full backup - Take a backup of content and any custom codes
  •     Cleanup any content -  remove unwanted content, packages, workflows
  •     Consistency and Traversal Checks - Validate system checks using Adobe tools
  •     Run a test suite - Ensure you have a test suite with all  functionality checking
  •     Disable custom authentication mechanisms - Disable any hooks related to authentications.
  •     upgrade customization - Upgrade your customs codes to reflect new APIs, removing deprecated ones.
  •     Stop the instance 
  •     Archive then delete the log files - Delete all old log files.

 
Content Repository Migration : Migrate the repository to Apache Oak Using crx2oak tool.

AEM Upgrade: Start the AEM 6.2 quickstart jar with the appropriate run modes (author, publish)

Post Upgrade : 

  • Verify the upgrade.log and error.log for any issues.
  • Ensure the home page is loading fine.
  • Run the same test suite which you ran before upgrade and ensure things are normal.
Related Posts:


Current scenarios: At present teams are upgrading various cq/aem versions as below.
CQ 5.3 to AEM 6.2
CQ 5.4 to AEM 6.2
CQ 5.5 to AEM 6.2
CQ 5.6 to AEM 6.2
CQ 5.6.1 to AEM 6.2
AEM 6.0 to AEM 6.2
AEM 61. to AEM 6.2


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