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# Upgrade

This document describes how to upgrade an existing installation of an on-premises ALM Octane server on Windows.

In this topic:

- Upgrade paths

- Before you upgrade: General guidelines

- Deploy the new version and start ALM Octane

- Configure and upgrade cluster nodes

- Upgrade spaces in ALM Octane

- Verify that spaces upgraded successfully

- Stop all ALM Octane servers

- Restart the ALM Octane servers

- Bulk update data access control

- Troubleshooting HTTPS filtering

## Upgrade paths

ALM Octane allows you to choose between two upgrade paths:

- Long-term path (LTP). Upgrade directly from one release to the next (for example, from 15.0.20 to 15.1.20, to the next LTP release), without having to upgrade to each of the interim service packs.

- Short-term path (STP). Upgrade to each new service pack (for example, from 15.1.60 to 15.1.90). If you choose this path, you will need to go through all the interim service packs in order to upgrade to the following release.

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.

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## Before you upgrade: General guidelines

Before upgrading, review the following:

1. ALM Octane 15.1.90 requires Elasticsearch version 7.9.1 (or higher 7.x).

2. 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.

3. Check that all spaces are up to date, first in Settings > Site > Spaces, and then in Settings > Site > POST UPGRADE JOBS. Delete any spaces that you do not want to upgrade to prevent problems in future upgrades.

4. Verify that your server machine, and if relevant, all cluster nodes, meet all prerequisites.

   This includes checking the supported versions for all third party tools, such as Elasticsearch, and upgrading accordingly. For details, see "Prerequisites" in the ALM Octane Installation Guide for Windows.

5. Stop the ALM Octane service on the server, and if relevant, on all cluster nodes.

6. Create backups of:

   - The repository located in C:\Program Files\Octane\repo (or in a cluster installation: \\MACHINE_NAME\REPO_NAME)

   - Existing ALM Octane configuration files including octane.conf, located in C:\Program Files\Octane\conf

   - Your database

   - Elasticsearch

   - If you are using ALM Octane Synchronizer, back up :

     - C:\Program Files\Octane\wrapper\wrapper.conf

     - service.locator.properties (C:\Program Files\Octane\webapps)

   For recommendations on making these backups, see Best practices for backing up ALM Octane data in the ALM Octane Help Center.

7. Take note of any special aspects of your configuration, such as:

   Special configuration | Recommendation
   --- | ---
   Did you install ALM Octane to a location other than C:\Program Files\Octane? | Refer to the location you used while upgrading.
   Did your organization's DBA make changes to database schemas, such as the addition of tables or columns? | Define an exception file. The exception file instructs ALM Octane to ignore manual changes to the database schemas during installation. For details, see "Using exception files for manual database changes" in the ALM Octane Installation Guide for Windows.

8. Before upgrading, remove all patches or hotfixes at WEB-INF/lib and WEB-INF/classes.

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## Deploy the new version and start ALM Octane

1. Download the ALM Octane package.

   https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/application-lifecycle-management-octane-on-prem/download

   Tip: To verify the digital signature of the RPM package, see "Installation Security" in the ALM Octane Secure Deployment and Configuration Guidelines.

2. Download and deploy the new version of ALM Octane using:

       setup.exe

3. On the server machine, select Start > ALM Octane > Start ALM Octane.

4. Check the C:\Program Files\octane\log\wrapper.log file. If you do not see the "Server is ready!" message, correct the errors shown in the log.

   - If you encounter a recoverable error in the wrapper.log or upgrade.log files, fix the problem and restart the server to resume upgrade.

   - If the log file contains the error message “The value https://<server URL> is invalid URL”, refer to the section Upgrade.

Caution: Do not use ALM Octane until you have completed Upgrade spaces in ALM Octane.

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## Configure and upgrade cluster nodes

After the upgrade on the first node has completed successfully, you can upgrade the remaining nodes in a cluster.

To configure and upgrade cluster nodes:

1. Deploy the new version of ALM Octane to each node.

2. On each node, select Start > ALM Octane > Start ALM Octane.

3. Check the C:\Program Files\octane\log\wrapper.log file. If you encounter a recoverable error in the wrapper.log or upgrade.log files, fix the problem and restart the server to resume upgrade.

Caution: Do not use ALM Octane until you have completed Upgrade spaces in ALM Octane.

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## Upgrade spaces in ALM Octane

After upgrading, log into ALM Octane as the site admin to upgrade each space.

To upgrade spaces in ALM Octane:

1. In a browser, navigate to <ServerURL>:<port>/ui?site.

2. Log in as the space admin, with the user name and password defined in the octane.conf file.

3. Click Site and then click the Spaces tab.

4. Select one or more spaces and click Upgrade.

   Upgrade is available only if the space needs to be upgraded.

5. Individual workspaces are upgraded in the background.

   (Optional) You can track a specific space's background jobs in Settings > Site > Spaces > Background Jobs. You can also track all spaces at once, as described in the following section.

   Note: Until all of the background jobs have completed, some data may be unavailable in trend graphs and other Elasticsearch-related features.

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## Verify that spaces upgraded successfully

Verify that all spaces were upgraded successfully from the previous version. To verify that a space has been upgraded, check that:

- The space status is Active (or Inactive if it was previously deactivated).

- The space version is updated to the current version.

In addition, check that all post-upgrade jobs were completed in Settings > Site > POST UPGRADE JOBS.

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## Stop all ALM Octane servers

Clear caches by stopping all ALM Octane servers.

Note: All of the servers must be stopped before you restart any of them.

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## Restart the ALM Octane servers

After you stop all of the servers, you can restart them.

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## Bulk update data access control

Note: This section is relevant only if you want to apply data access control for the first time to an upgraded system.

Follow the instructions in Set up data access in the ALM Octane Help Center. When you reach the Assign data access categories to items section, use the Bulk Update option to assign data access categories to items, so that all the items are accessible only to the relevant roles.

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## Troubleshooting HTTPS filtering

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.

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Next steps:

- Update mandatory configuration parameters, such as SMTP_NOTIFICATION_SENDER_EMAIL. See Configuration parameters in the ALM Octane Help Center.
- Download the newest IDE plugins for this ALM Octane version. See IDE integrations in the ALM Octane Help Center.
- If you work with the REST API, you might want to check if any API resources have been deprecated. While the deprecated resources are supported for a while, we recommend that you start updating your code so that you use the resource aliases instead. To see deprecated resources for a particular version, see What's changed in the REST API in the ALM Octane Help Center.

https://admhelp.microfocus.com ALM Octane 8942
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