Upgrade Highlights

Micro Focus ALM Octane

Software version: 15.1.90

Software release date: July 2021

Document publication date: July 05, 2021

Following are highlights to pay attention to when upgrading to a higher ALM Octane version.

Refer to Linux Upgrade Guide or Windows Upgrade Guide for the full upgrade process.

In this topic:

## General notes

Category | Description
--- | ---
General | Make sure to have viable accessible backups of your relational database (either Oracle or SQL Server), Elasticsearch and the repository folder on your file system. For details, see Best practices for backing up ALM Octane data.
Cluster | Make sure to stop services for all cluster nodes before upgrading.

## Upgrading to 15.1.90

Category | Description
--- | ---
Upgrade path | The current release is a service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 15.1.90 from 15.1.60. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 15.1.60, upgrade now. See Linux Upgrade Guide or Windows Upgrade Guide for details of upgrade paths.
Elasticsearch version | ALM Octane 15.1.90 supports Elasticsearch version 7.9.1. If you are using an earlier version of Elasticsearch, you must upgrade to 7.9.1. Note that you cannot upgrade to ALM Octane 15.1.90 if you still have indexes created in Elasticsearch 5.x which have not yet been re-indexed (as described in previous upgrade guides). To verify that all your spaces are up-to-date, open Settings > Site > Spaces. The ELS Maintenance Status of all your spaces should be Done.
CentOS support | ALM Octane 15.1.90 does not support CentOS 8, due to the CentOS 8 EOL announcement.
HTTPS protocol | In ALM Octane 15.1.90, we added reinforcement for on-premises environments working with HTTPS. If ALM Octane is defined in octane.conf > app-url as using HTTPS protocol, users trying to access ALM Octane with HTTP will now be blocked. To enable HTTP when SSL is defined in ALM Octane: In some cases, you may want to use HTTP protocol to access ALM Octane despite defining your environment as secure (for example for an internal tool). In this case, add the parameter allow-http-requests-if-ssl-enabled to the octane.conf > server-binding section, and define its value as true. This enables usage of HTTP in a secure environment. To enable HTTP when SSL is defined via reverse proxy: If you are working with SSL offloading, the X-Forwarded-Proto header must be defined in a reverse proxy. If you have not defined this header, you will no longer be able to connect to ALM Octane via a load balancer. To resolve this you can either define the header as described in KM03286744, or choose one of the following options: Add the octane.conf parameter allow-http-requests-if-ssl-enabled as described above. After upgrading, edit the value of the site parameter ENABLE_SECURED_CONNECTION_VALIDATION to false to disable the new HTTPS filter when using SSL offloading.

## Upgrading to 15.1.60

Category | Description
--- | ---
Upgrade path | The current release is a service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 15.1.60 from 15.1.40. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 15.1.40, upgrade now. See Linux Upgrade Guide or Windows Upgrade Guide for details of upgrade paths.
Changes to configuration files | Starting with ALM Octane 15.1.60, instead of having configuration files such as octane.conf located in the octane\conf directory on each node, ALM Octane uses one set of configuration files located in your repository folder. Following upgrade, your configuration files are automatically moved to <Repository folder>\conf. In the future, if you need to make changes to any of the configuration settings, you only need to do this once in the relevant file located in <Repository folder>\conf. When you restart each of the nodes, ALM Octane pulls the configuration change automatically from the repository. Following upgrade, the repository-folder property is no longer located in the octane.conf file. Instead, the path defined in this property is now located in the file wrapper-parameters-for-customer-site.conf. Caution: To roll back the upgrade, you will need your pre-upgrade configuration files from each node. Make sure you save a copy of the configuration files in a secure location before upgrading. You cannot roll back without these files. This includes octane.conf, and any other configuration files in /opt/octane/conf.
Elasticsearch version | ALM Octane 15.1.60 supports Elasticsearch versions 7.9.1, 7.6.2, or 6.8.1 (or higher 6.8.x). Elasticsearch 6.x is EOL from November 2020. We therefore recommend upgrading to 7.x. Note that upgrading to 7.x requires that all current indexes were created in version 6.x. If not, you will need to wait until after the Elasticsearch index maintenance described below, before moving to 7.x.
Elasticsearch index maintenance | If you have not completed Elasticsearch index maintenance in a previous release, and you have indexes created in an Elasticsearch version lower than 6.x, the upgrade will automatically re-index them. For pre-upgrade actions that you need to perform, refer to the Upgrade guide. Users will not be able to access shared spaces that were not re-indexed, until re-index is complete. In the next release Elasticsearch 7 will be mandatory. You must therefore re-index all spaces in the current release, or the old indexes will prevent you from upgrading Elasticsearch.
Non-standard top-level domains | ALM Octane validates that the top-level domain (TLD) entered in the SERVER_BASE_URL parameter is listed in https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db. If your URL includes a TLD that is not listed there, you can use a new configuration parameter, ADDITIONAL_ALLOWED_TLD, to add your TLD to the list of TLDs accepted by ALM Octane. For details, refer to the topic “Upgrading non-standard top-level domains” in the Linux Upgrade Guide or Windows Upgrade Guide.

## Upgrading to 15.1.40

Category | Description
--- | ---
Elasticsearch version | ALM Octane 15.1.40 supports Elasticsearch versions 6.8.1 (or higher 6.8.x) and 7.6.2. Elasticsearch 6.x is EOL from November 2020. We therefore recommend upgrading to 7.6.2. Note that upgrading to 7.x requires that all current indexes were created in version 6.x. If not, you will need to wait until after the Elasticsearch index maintenance described below, before moving to 7.x.
Elasticsearch index maintenance | If you have not completed Elasticsearch index maintenance in a previous release, and you have indexes created in an Elasticsearch version lower than 6.x, the upgrade will automatically re-index them. For pre-upgrade actions that you need to perform, see the Installation Guide > Upgrade section in the ALM Octane Help Center. During Elasticsearch index maintenance, users can log into ALM Octane and work, but some features are disabled until the maintenance is complete.
Patch removal | Before upgrading, remove all patches or hotfixes at WEB-INF/lib and WEB-INF/classes.

## Upgrading to 15.1.20

The following section is for upgrading to 15.1.20. You can upgrade to ALM Octane 15.1.20 either from either from 15.0.60, or directly from 15.0.20 (the previous LTP version).

Category | Description
--- | ---
Elasticsearch version | ALM Octane 15.1.20 supports Elasticsearch versions 6.8.1 (or higher 6.8.x), or 7.6.2. If your current Elasticsearch version is lower than 6.8.1, you must upgrade to either 6.8.1 (or higher 6.8.x), or to 7.6.2, before upgrading ALM Octane. Elasticsearch 6.x is EOL from November 2020. We therefore recommend upgrading to 7.6.2. Note that upgrading to 7.x requires that all current indexes were created in version 6.x. If not, you will need to wait until after the Elasticsearch index maintenance described below, before moving to 7.x.
Oracle version | Support for Oracle 12.1 has been deprecated. If you were using ALM Octane with Oracle 12.1, you must upgrade Oracle to version 12.2 or later.
Pre-upgrade actions | This upgrade performs Elasticsearch index maintenance. For pre-upgrade actions that you need to perform, see the Installation Guide > Upgrade section in the ALM Octane Help Center. This includes checking storage space on the Elasticsearch server. If there is insufficient disk space on the Elasticsearch server, the ALM Octane server will not start.
Post-upgrade actions | During Elasticsearch index maintenance, users can log into ALM Octane and work, but some features are disabled until the maintenance is complete.
Connection string changes | Within the main site settings defined in the octane.conf file, the syntax of the connection-string parameter underwent internal changes. In simple installation environments, the connection-string value will be automatically converted to the new syntax. If you were using a secure connection, you need to manually edit the octane.conf file to enable SSL/SSO, as described in the Installation Guide > Using SSL/SSO section. If you receive an error message when you start the ALM Octane server, contact Support to help you edit the octane.conf file before starting the ALM Octane server.
DoS filter changes | The built-in DoS (denial-of-service) protection filter which was previously enabled in ALM Octane will now be disabled by default. We recommend that the site admin implement dedicated DoS protection. Alternatively, the site admin can reactivate the built-in filter. For details on DoS protection, refer to the Secure Deployment and Configuration Guidelines.
Linux start/stop service changes | ALM Octane’s service launcher for Linux has changed the way it works, from System V init to systemd. As a result, the command to manage the ALM Octane service changed from service octane start/stop/restart to systemctl start/stop/restart octane. The systemctl command requires root access. If your organization delegates this action to a non-root user, you can use the sudo command defined for a specific user, with a parameter defined for this command only. For details, please contact Support.

## Upgrading from 15.0.40

Category | Description
--- | ---
Configuration file changes | In ALM Octane 15.0.40, configuration settings were defined in the setup.xml and octane.yml files. In 15.0.60 and 15.1.20, the main site settings are defined in the octane.conf file. In addition, there are optional configuration files to set up ALM Octane environments using secure Elasticsearch, proxy server, and LDAP or SSO authentication. During the upgrade process, the settings that were defined in your setup.xml and octane.yml files are automatically populated into their corresponding fields in the new configuration files. After you start ALM Octane, you can modify these settings as needed within the new .conf files. For a full list of settings in the current ALM Octane installation, see "Configure site settings" in the ALM Octane Help Center.

## 15.0.20 to 15.0.40

No upgrade highlights

## 12.60 CP11 to 15.0.20

No upgrade highlights

## 12.60 CP10 to 12.60 CP11

No upgrade highlights

## 12.60 CP9 to 12.60 CP10

Category | Description
--- | ---
Pre-upgrade action | You will not be able to upgrade spaces to 12.60 CP10 until all spaces have been successfully upgraded to 12.60 CP9, and their Elasticsearch index successfully split (as part of this upgrade). If there are non-split spaces remaining, all the spaces will be blocked for upgrade.
Pre-upgrade action | Upgrade to Elasticsearch 6.8.

## 12.60 CP8 to 12.60 CP9

Category | Description
--- | ---
Pre-upgrade actions | This upgrade performs Elasticsearch index maintenance. For pre-upgrade actions you must perform, review Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM03347999. These actions include checking storage space on the Elasticsearch server and allowing scripting on indexes.
Post-upgrade actions | Elasticsearch index maintenance: Users can log into ALM Octane and work, but some features are disabled until the maintenance is complete. For Synchronizer and Jetty, restart the ALM Octane service after all Elasticsearch index maintenance post-upgrade jobs are complete. Verify that the audit migration to Elasticsearch completes successfully. Verify this in the Post Upgrade Jobs tab under Site Settings. Note that the audit migration Post Upgrade job starts 24 hours after the upgrade ends.
Other | From 12.60 CP9, LDAP configuration can be carried out in the UI. In Settings, select Site > Servers, and locate the LDAP Servers section.

## 12.60 CP7 to 12.60 CP8

Category | Description
--- | ---
octane.yml changes | The IsCluster attribute is set to true by default. If you have a single node configuration, set this attribute to false before upgrading. To enable SSO support, modify the IDP section and Authentication type attributes.

## 12.55 CP6 to 12.60 CP7

Category | Description and actions
--- | ---
Requirement changes | Upgrade Elasticsearch version 2.4 to version 5.6.
Setup.xml changes | A new section, oracle_database, was added. It contains the new useDefaultSort setting. setup xml is not overridden by the new ALM Octane version, so you do not need to take the upgrade setup.xml from the repository.
Other changes | The ALM Octane service name changes after the upgrade from HPALM-> octane in Linux and Octane ALM in Windows. The ALM Octane service replaces the initialize server initserver command.

## 12.55 CP5 to 12.55 CP6

Category | Description and actions
--- | ---
setup.xml changes | The DefaultSpaceMode parameter is mandatory. Add this parameter if it does not exist.

© 2016-2021 Micro Focus

Send documentation feedback