This article describes the overall planning and execution of the xDB Cloud set upgrade.
Because you must always connect to xDB Cloud sets using the matching Sitecore XP version, it is important to plan and implement an upgrade for both the local Sitecore XP environment and the xDB Cloud environment during a similar timeframe. When planning the upgrade, ensure that the specific upgrade path is supported by xDB Cloud service (see xDB Cloud Compatibility Table).
For instructions on how to upgrade local Sitecore XP instances, please refer to the Sitecore Downloads page.
To upgrade xDB Cloud sets, use the following process as a general guidance:
- The customer contacts Sitecore Support to request an upgrade. The upgrade date, timeframe, and exact workflow is negotiated within a support ticket.
- In the scheduled timeframe, Sitecore Support performs the upgrade of xDB Cloud resources to the target version. The estimated upgrade timeline can be found in the service catalog. During the time of the upgrade, xDB Cloud service might not work or will work inconsistently.
- After the upgrade is finished, Sitecore Support notifies the customer about completion and post-steps (if any).
Note: If you do not have a valid Sitecore certification, you must contact your Sitecore Implementation Partner to register the support ticket for you. If this is not possible, contact your Sitecore representative to access the Sitecore Support portal.
Please check the considerations below to prepare the production Content Delivery (CD) and Content Management (CM) environment for the xDB Cloud upgrade:
- During the upgrade period, the xDB Cloud set being upgraded might be unavailable. To ensure production environment stability, you must disable xDB. To disable xDB on your solution, revert the xDB Cloud configuration and apply configuration changes from How to use Sitecore XP without xDB.
In this case, the suggestion is to disable xDB, upgrade the Sitecore CD and CM servers before the scheduled upgrade time, and then re-enable xDB when Sitecore Support confirms that the upgrade process is finished.
- If xDB data collection cannot be disabled due to business requirements, please note that production Sitecore instances connected to the xDB Cloud set will continue working with limited functionality after an xDB Cloud upgrade. Data collection works fine, but aggregation and reporting functions are unavailable.
In this case, when CD/CM is running a pre-upgrade version and xDB Cloud is running a post-upgrade version, xDB becomes disabled upon CD/CM application restart or, if the latest xDB Cloud client package is not installed, site outage occurs.
- For more optimal upgrade planning and agility, an additional xDB Cloud set (nonproduction) can be purchased and provisioned for the target version. Please contact your regional Sitecore representative for more information.
- For certain upgrade paths, a rebuilding of the reporting database (history processing) might be needed on the final stage of the xDB Cloud Upgrade. During this task, xDB Cloud can be used but analytics reports might not display consistent data until full completion of the history processing. The timing of history processing varies significantly depending on a customer's database size, so cannot be accurately estimated in general.