Upgrading the Governance Engine Image

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This section describes how to upgrade the Governance Engine container image to a newer version and restart the instance to apply the update.

About this task

Upgrading the Governance Engine image involves shutting down the running instance, updating the container image reference in the terraform configuration, and bringing Governance Engine back online. Following this procedure ensures a controlled upgrade with minimal risk to governance data.

Important: Governance Engine uses a persistent data volume that contains highly sensitive information related to digital wallets and financial transactions.

Ensure that a complete backup of the data volume is available before starting the upgrade.
Do not delete or modify the data volume during the upgrade process.

Procedure

Shut down the running Governance Engine instance

Shut down the Governance Engine virtual machine.
```
terraform destroy --auto-approve
```

Confirm that the domain has stopped.

virsh list --all

Sample output:

# virsh list --all
  Id   Name           State
------------------------------
  1    goveng       shutoff

Update the Governance Engine image version
1. Open the Terraform variables file.
```
./contracts/terraform.tfvars
```
2. Update the Governance Engine container image variable to the required version.
```
GOV_ENG_IMAGE="<latest-image-version>"
```
Restart Governance Engine
Bring Governance Engine back online in the following modes:
- Standalone mode (using the instructions of step 11 in Bringing Governance Engine Online)
- HA mode (using the instructions of step 12 in Bringing Governance Engine Online)
The instance is restarted using the updated container image.

Results

Governance Engine is upgraded to the specified image version and resumes normal operation using the existing data volume. The logs similar to the following will be displayed during normal operation:

b151-a23 podman[1547]:  2026-05-31 11:40:38.379073409 +0000 UTC m=+1.985339922 container start 21cb58bb4f953b77d587cfc1f79988ceb8e84bff70bdbcbaaf50b8e23e67dcd6 (image=9.12.17.143:5000/goveng-server@sha256:eb801ef2fbb3f6c16cac2d889425d1990af2b920d451d93553ee38f797883f45, name=fvt-v120-26May-backup-goveng-server-goveng-backup-server, pod_id=28fe3b6d58565bd18196675df129e7b63d137c8a811b3833cbab229c29dd9d49, org.opencontainers.image.source=https://github.com/dfnsco/goveng, org.opencontainers.image.title=goveng, org.opencontainers.image.url=https://github.com/dfnsco/goveng, org.opencontainers.image.version=v0.1.9-s390x, org.opencontainers.image.created=2026-05-22T19:10:27.565Z, org.opencontainers.image.description=Governance Engine for On-Prem Deployment, org.opencontainers.image.licenses=, org.opencontainers.image.revision=8a72d3e0927ade013fb05ae395542592ad5aa447)