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Upgrading Read This Overview

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mhogeweg edited this page Dec 27, 2012 · 3 revisions

When you are upgrading your geoportal from an older version to the latest, it is important to plan the overall process well. This overview topic provides a high-level view of considerations when doing an upgrade. After reading this, you can choose whether to use the file system method or the SVN method to upgrade your geoportal.

Table of Contents

Plan

It is recommended that you keep your old Geoportal installed and operational during this whole process. Read through the Release Notes for the new geoportal version to review the new software features and configurations that you may want to consider taking advantage of in the upgrade.

Deployment Environment

Review system requirements of the new version and plan if the environment needs to change (since it possibly might mean instantiating a new machine/environment or upgrade of prerequisite software). Don't forget to check new installation requirements for the:

  • Operating System
  • Database
  • User Store (e.g., LDAP)
  • JDK
  • Web Container (e.g. Apache Tomcat, Glassfish)++
++ If you have to upgrade your web container, the new web container instance (let's call it Tomcat for simplicity) could either be installed on a new server, or on the existing server. If installed on the same machine, the new Tomcat should be installed into a different folder path and configured to run on a different port so that the two Tomcats do not clash. Later, the old Tomcat can be uninstalled and the new Tomcat port can be switched, if needed.

Install New Geoportal Server and Migrate Customizations

Install an out-of-the-box instance of the new Geoportal Server. Incorporate your customizations into the Geoportal Server 1.2 software. Here is where the file system method or the SVN method will be of use.

Migrate Content

Because the new Geoportal version may require new business tables in the database, it is recommended that you keep both the old and new Geoportals operational so that you can go through an explicit content migration from one to the other. The easiest way to migrate content is to simple harvest your older geoportal into the new geoportal (follow instructions at How to Publish Resources). Note that with the harvest, you will lose ownership information for the records, as all records will be harvested under the ownership of the user who registers the harvest. Ownership can be manually reassigned, but this can be tedious. The other option for migration is to use the geoportal migration instructions latent in versions prior to 1.2. There is a migration guide available here - to migrate to the latest version, you would follow this guide, and then follow instructions at Upgrade 1.x to 1.2 database to manually add the additional tables for versions post-1.2.

Test the New Geoportal

Make sure content and functionality of new Geoportal is correct and operational.

Switch the New Geoportal to Production

Perform any needed changes to network, firewall, or proxys in order to direct users to the new Geoportal.

Clean up

Once you've thoroughly tested your new geoportal deployment, you can archive the old Geoportal, including environment and deployment notes and uninstall any old software.

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