Upgrade process overview

The upgrade of Engineering Lifecycle Management requires the Engineering Lifecycle Management operator upgrade and Engineering Lifecycle Management instance upgrade in the sequence. You must upgrade the Engineering Lifecycle Management instance immediately after you complete the Engineering Lifecycle Management operator upgrade.

The Engineering Lifecycle Management operator upgrades the Engineering Lifecycle Management instance according to the upgrade groups. An upgrade group defines the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications that are upgraded together within the group. The Engineering Lifecycle Management instance upgrade is processed in sequential order of the upgrade groups. The Engineering Lifecycle Management operator defines the following upgrade groups by default.

Table 1. Engineering Lifecycle Management instance upgrade groups
Upgrade group	Group name	Applications
Group 1	JTS and JAS	Jazz® Authorization Server Jazz Team Server
Group 2	GC	Global Configuration Management
Group 3	ELM applications	Data Collection Component Engineering Insights DOORS® Next IBM® Engineering Test Management Engineering Workflow Management Report Builder Lifecycle Query Engine

If you want to use the custom upgrade groups for the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications rather than the default groups, you can define the custom upgrade groups. It helps you to control the upgrade sequence according to your upgrade strategy and maintenance schedule. For more information about defining the custom upgrade groups, see Defining the custom upgrade groups for Engineering Lifecycle Management instance.

The Engineering Lifecycle Management operator upgrades one group at a time according to the group sequence. When all Engineering Lifecycle Management applications of the group are upgraded without any errors, it starts the upgrade of the next group. If one or more Engineering Lifecycle Management applications in the group are failed to upgrade, the Engineering Lifecycle Management operator goes into a pause state. You must resolve the error manually to resume the upgrade process. Review the error that is shown in the Upgrade Events and Application Events tables and resolve the error by following the troubleshooting information that is provided in Troubleshooting of upgrade errors. The Engineering Lifecycle Management operator resumes the upgrade process after a pre-defined time interval. If the error is resolved, it continues with the upgrade process. If the error still exists, the Engineering Lifecycle Management operator goes into a pause state again and resumes the upgrade process after the pre-defined time interval. If you cannot resolve the error by following the troubleshooting information, contact IBM support.

The upgrade process consists of the following steps.

Table 2. The upgrade process steps
Upgrade step	Applicable group	Description
Upgrade validations		The validation of the upgrade prerequisites before the upgrade process starts.
ELM instance pre-upgrade validations	All the groups	The validation of the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications before the upgrade process starts. The Application Events table lists the errors that are related to the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. If you see any error, you must resolve that to resume the upgrade steps.
Upgrade	One group at a time	The Engineering Lifecycle Management applications within the group are upgraded together. The Application Events table lists the errors that are related to the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. If you see any error, you must resolve that to resume the upgrade steps.
Post upgrade validations	One group at a time	The validation of the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications that are upgraded. This step runs in parallel with the upgrade step. The Application Events table lists the errors that are related to the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. If you see any error, you must resolve that to resume the upgrade steps.
Application diagnostics	All the groups	It runs the application diagnostics. The diagnostics report is available under the Diagnostics section of each Engineering Lifecycle Management application. You must review the report and resolve the reported errors.

The Upgrade Events table provides the upgrade process summary. The Application Events table provides the detailed status of the upgrade of each Engineering Lifecycle Management application. Review the Reason and Message columns in the table to understand the detailed information. You must review the information available in the Upgrade Events and Application Events tables together to understand the overall upgrade progress.