Upgrade of RSA AM 8.3 to 8.5 P2

[MohammadAmeenu1]

Hi Folks,

We are on RSA AM 8.3 P5 RSA Appliance and planning for upgrade. Currently we have 6 AM's

1 Primary and 5 replicas:  

Two questions

1. Can we upgrade hardware appliance from 8.3 p5 to 8.5 P2?

If answer is yes to 1st question

2. What will happen to users connected on Primary at the time of upgrade ? I presume they failover to available replicas.

If that happens after the upgrade we will be left over with

1 primary on 8.5(currently upgraded) and remaining 5 will be like (1 Primary and 4 replicas on v8.3 P5)

3.Now the question is, can 8.3.P5 and 8.5 coexist in one environment,  I am trying to understand the behavior and strategize upgrade path with minimal downtime for thousands of users. Any documentation/insight on this is much appreciated.

Thanks

Mo

[GeorgeMaher]

1. Can we upgrade hardware appliance from 8.3 p5 to 8.5 P2?

Yes you can 

2. What will happen to users connected on Primary at the time of upgrade ? I presume they failover to available replicas.

If that happens after the upgrade we will be left over with

During Primary upgrade, the authentications will be redirected to the replicas,

3.Now the question is, can 8.3.P5 and 8.5 coexist in one environment,  I am trying to understand the behavior and strategize upgrade path with minimal downtime for thousands of users. Any documentation/insight on this is much appreciated.

All the instances must be on the same versions, or you will be facing internal replication errors,

Once you upgrade the primary, start by upgrading the replicas one by one

Thanks

Gee

[MohammadAmeenu1]

Thanks for your input Gee.

To the above 2nd query, few more doubts.

1.Does this mean, we can upgrade 1 Primary and 5 replicas in "one change window"  WITHOUT any downtime of users??

2.Do we upgrade first primary and then just replica instances to 8.5?? or do we need any switchover of instances before upgrades on replicas

3.Is there any documentation where I can find to upgrade running infrastructure? One primary and one replica upgrade should be fine.

Thanks

Mo

[GeorgeMaher]

1.Does this mean, we can upgrade 1 Primary and 5 replicas in "one change window"  WITHOUT any downtime of users??

Yes, all the authentications will be redirected randomly to the other 5 replicas 

2.Do we upgrade first primary and then just replica instances to 8.5?? or do we need any switchover of instances before upgrades on replicas

You upgrade the primary First, and then you upgrade all your replicas one by one 

3.Is there any documentation where I can find to upgrade running infrastructure? One primary and one replica upgrade should be fine.

You need to have all you instances on the same version, you cannot just upgrade one primary and one replica 

Thanks,

Gee