Updating Decision Server Insights

Installation Manager is used to update Decision Server Insights V8.8.1 in both a development environment and in production. After you update your production server, you can build your existing solutions and deploy them.

Changes from one version to the next can affect development and production in a number of ways. In all environments, before you update you must stop or shut down the servers that are running on the computer. The first question that you must ask is Do you need to update a production server. The answer to this question determines when you update your development environment. If you do have a production server, you must update Insight Server before you deploy solutions from the new Insight Designer. If you deploy a solution from the new version before you update your production server, a solution might rely on features that are not available in the previous version. To avoid this situation, continue to use the previous version of Insight Designer until you are satisfied that the update is stable. When you are ready to deploy a new version of your solutions, update your new development environment, rebuild the solution, and then deploy.

Important: The context in which the following terms are used deserves your attention.

migrate: Migration refers to the conversion of data in the server database from the format used by a previous release, to the format used by the current release. It is also used to mean the conversion of solution projects from the format used by a previous release, to the format used by the current release. If you need to migrate the server database, then continuous availability is not supported.

update: An update refers to the installation of a new software version.

The following diagram shows the high-level steps that you must take to update Decision Server Insights V8.8.0 to V8.8.1. This update does not require database migration. In most cases, the steps are done in the following order:

Update the production server hosts. When this step is complete, the solutions that ran in the previous version are now running in the new runtime.
Update the development environment.
Migrate all of the solutions that show errors due to the update. This step converts solutions to make them compatible with the new release. It is not required for all updates.
When a solution needs to be modified, you can edit and deploy a new version to the updated servers. The previous version of the solution remains active until you deploy the new solution on all of the runtime servers and activate it. Use solutionManager deploy enableOnly=true and the solutionManager activate commands to tell Insight Server to switch to the new version.

The following topics take you through the steps to update a production server and deploy the solutions that you developed in a previous version.