Epicor have a really good tool, which will interrogate your database on provide a report on what will be upgraded cleanly and what may need some additional work. This is quite cheap to do , and you can even host in the cloud for a month or two to play with your data in the new format to see how the upgrade went.
When he update patches (probably the wrong term for the last segment of the version, like: 10.1.400.23), we just apply them to the test environment, do some testing, then repeat to the Production environment.
Do these minor updates (10.1.400.xx to 10.1.500.xx) require any changes that would prohibit updating just the test environment - since it is running on the same App Server as the Production DB?
And what about major updates (10.1.xxx.xx to 10.2.xxx.xx) ?
aidacra
(Nathan your friendly neighborhood Support Engineer)
4
How we refer to the versioning numbers we put out there for ERP.
10.x.y.z:
Point update e.g. 10.1.400.22, 10.2.200.7, 10.2.300.2
To answer your question directly: no, you can just update the test environment. Though, releases are not minor updates. We change the database schema and can introduce breaking changes to UI and server-side customization components. That being said, I would never personally put anything on a production server that isn’t production ready and would install anything I was testing on a non-production server.
I would recommend removing the existing appserver at the previous release (from the EAC, IIS, and the Windows file system), and redeploy the appserver with the same name at the new release. Beyond that, from a deployment standpoint, that is all you would need to do in your testing environment. I know the documentation says that one can upgrade an appserver process from one release to another, but, save yourself some potential tribulation and start over with that appserver process.
If the update is more than just a point update, you need to treat the update as “major” with a full testing protocol of quote to cash and of any modifications made (custom reports, BPMs, UI customizations, quick searches, etc).
So to go from 10.1.400.23 to 10.1.600.30, we need to actually “Install” 10.1.600.1, and then update that to 10.1.600.30?
In other words the “update” files on EpicWeb that begin with UD (like UD10.1.600.30.zip) are only good to get an exist installtion of 10.1.600.xx up to 10.1.600.30.
And to “update” from 10.1.xxx (prior to .600) to 10.2.200.30, requires the RL files like RL10.2.200.zip
That correct?
aidacra
(Nathan your friendly neighborhood Support Engineer)
6
You would install 10.1.600.0 (base release) and then the latest point update for that release (10.1.600.30). Then, you can upgrade your 10.1.400.23 database directly to 10.1.600.30 in the Epicor Administration Console (EAC).
Ask your CAM. It is a tool that @AndyGHA was mentioning . It is free, your CAM needs to set you up with an account. Once you run it, you go online and see some great reports. It is called Epicor ERP Analyser
Like @knash, we are right now in the testing phase of a 10.1.500.17 to 10.2.200.x upgrade (forget but it might be .7). Same issues with the few customized GUI screens, but it seems that all of our other stuff works just fine, including the configurators (much to our surprise!)
