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.

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.
Cluster Make sure to stop services for all cluster nodes before upgrading.
STP/LTP Upgrade ALM Octane allows you to choose between two upgrade paths:
  • Short-term path (STP). Upgrade to each new service pack (for example, from 16.1.100 to 16.1.200). If you choose this path, you will need to go through all the interim service packs in order to upgrade to the following release.

  • Long-term path (LTP). Upgrade directly from one release to the next (for example from 16.1.100 to 16.2.100, to the next LTP release), without having to upgrade to each of the interim service packs.

Refer to the release's upgrade path details below.

Upgrading to 16.2.100 (LTP release)

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current version is a long term path (LTP) release, meaning that you can upgrade to ALM Octane 16.2.100 either directly from 16.1.100, or from 16.1.200.

Elasticsearch version

ALM Octane now also supports Elasticsearch 8.6.0. We recommend using Elasticsearch 7.17.8 or 8.6.0.

Elasticsearch re-index

If you are upgrading directly from 16.1.100, verify that re-index has completed successfully in all spaces. For details, see "LTP Path: Verify Elasticsearch re-indexing (ES version 8.x)" in the ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

MS SQL Server databases

If you are using MS SQL Server databases with the FILL_EXISTING site_action, the database administrator should set READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON on all databases used by ALM Octane, before deploying the new version. For details, see "Changes to MS SQL Server databases" in the ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading to 16.1.200

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current release is an STP service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 16.1.200 from 16.1.100. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 16.1.100, upgrade now.

Elasticsearch re-index

In this service pack, Elasticsearch re-index is mandatory.

  • Space re-index. Spaces that have not been re-indexed are not accessible to users. You must complete re-index before upgrading.

    If you do not, you can re-index after upgrading, but access to the shared space is blocked until re-index is completed successfully.

  • Site re-index. ALM Octane does not enforce re-index at the site level. It is the responsibility of the site admin to verify that site re-index is complete.

    If re-index is not complete, the index will not perform properly following upgrade. For example, audit data may be inaccurate. In addition, upgrade to Elasticsearch 8 may fail in future releases.

Upgrading to 16.1.100 (LTP release)

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current version is a long term path (LTP) release, meaning that you can upgrade to ALM Octane 16.1.100 either directly from 16.0.100, or from 16.0.400.

Elasticsearch re-index

The upgrade will trigger Elasticsearch re-index. It is important to note that the mechanism for Elasticsearch re-index has been changed to significantly minimize downtime.

When a space's post-upgrader is running, its Elasticsearch features are not all disabled during the entire process. Instead, features are in downtime only when an index they are dependent on is in the downtime phase of its re-indexing.

For details, see "Prepare for Elasticsearch re-indexing" in the 16.1.100 ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Note that re-index must be completed. You will not be able to use ALM Octane in the next release if re-index was not completed successfully.

Hazelcast version

ALM Octane 16.1.100 uses Hazelcast v.5.1. This requires changes to the hazelcast.xml configuration file. For details, see "Update the hazelcast.xml configuration file" in the 16.1.100 ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Docker support

You can now use ALM Octane in Docker. For details, see "Upgrade ALM Octane in Docker"  in the 16.1.100 ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Known issue

When upgrading to ALM Octane 16.1.100 directly from 16.0.100 (LTP upgrade path) in Oracle environments, if you have a space with more than 500 workspaces, you may encounter an error message regarding the FixVulnerabilitiesCountOfWIUpgrader Data upgrader. For a workaround, see “Troubleshooting a Data upgrader failure” in the 16.1.100 ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading to 16.0.400

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current release is a service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 16.0.400 from 16.0.300. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 16.0.300, upgrade now.

HTTP/2

ALM Octane now supports the HTTP/2 protocol. For details, refer to the post-upgrade section in the ALM Octane Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading to 16.0.300

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current release is a service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 16.0.300 from 16.0.200. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 16.0.200, upgrade now.

Elasticsearch version

As we communicated earlier (see https://portal.microfocus.com/s/article/KM000003192), we recommend using Elasticsearch version 7.16.2 to prevent a potential log4j security breach in the Elasticsearch server.

Known issue

When upgrading to ALM Octane 16.0.300 in Oracle environments, if you have a space with more than 500 workspaces, you may encounter an error message regarding the FixVulnerabilitiesCountOfWIUpgrader Data upgrader. This is a known issue. For a workaround, see “Troubleshooting a Data upgrader failure” in the ALM Octane 16.0.300 Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading to 16.0.200

Category Description
Upgrade path

The current release is a service pack, meaning that you can only upgrade to 16.0.200 from 16.0.100. If you have not yet upgraded to ALM Octane 16.0.100, upgrade now.

Upgrading to 16.0.100 (LTP release)

Category Description
Java version ALM Octane 16.0.100 requires JDK 11. You must install JDK 11 before upgrading ALM Octane.
Elasticsearch version

ALM Octane 16.0.100 requires Elasticsearch version 7.16.2. If you are using an earlier version of Elasticsearch, you must upgrade to 7.16.2.

Note that you cannot upgrade to ALM Octane 16.0.100 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.

Supported upgrade path

The current release is a long term path release (LTP), meaning that you can upgrade to ALM Octane 16.0.100 either directly from 15.1.20, or from 15.1.90.

LTP upgrade

If you are upgrading from 15.1.20 (previous LTP release), there are various pre-upgrade and post-upgrade steps required, as described in the upgrade guide.

Caution: To roll back the LTP 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.

For details on what was added in each of the service packs since the previous LTP release, see: