Will my replicas authenticate tokens while upgrading primary?

[JOYMANGRUM]

I'm planning on upgrading my Auth Managers from 8.1 to 8.2. I have a primary and a replica in place. Per the documentation it says to upgrade the Primary first, then replicas. During this time will my replicas still provide token authentication to our agents while i'm in the process of upgrading the primary? I'm looking to see what type of service impact will happen during this upgrade.

thanks

[JayGuillette · Accepted solution]

Yes, though you should periodically check replication status is OK in the Operations Console - Deployment Configuration - Instances - Status Report.  

Ops console is the one with port 7072 instead of 7004, something like https://rsa01.company.com:7072/operations-console 

if abbreviations work, you could try https://rsa01.company.com/oc 

Or configure system warnings to email you if Replication is broken.

As Long as Replication is working, the replica(s) will have an exact copy of the Primary database and can authenticate everyone.  What you lose is Administrative ability while primary is down, e.g. add users, agents, tokens...

If Primary is dead, you can promote a replica to become the new primary.

[JOYMANGRUM]

Thanks Jay!

[JayGuillette]

Another thing, I would upgrade to AM 8.1 SP1, then update with 8.1 SP1 Patch 15, primary 1st and replica 2nd.

While doing this, the replica will still sync with the primary after upgrade, patch is done and services restart.  So an AM 8.1 SP1 P15 Primary can replicate to an AM 8.1 replica.

But AM 8.2 does not replicate with any version less than 8.2, so when you upgrade your primary, you will break replication, and it will not work until replica is upgraded to 8.2

[JOYMANGRUM]

Great advice, we are at 8.1 SP1 Patch 08

thanks again

[JayGuillette]

The manual says you can upgrade direct from 8.1 SP1 to 8.2, but we in support have seen a few cases where it worked better if you upgraded to P15 first.  It does not take that much extra time.