File Director upgrades
Whether applying a patch or deploying a new base image, customers are strongly recommended to take an appliance configuration snapshot from the Admin Console prior to the upgrade in case they need to restore this following the upgrade. Refer to Apply a File Director patch.
In this section:
2024.1 upgrade path
You must deploy a new base image when upgrading from an older release. This allows you to benefit from improvements to the VM such as the updated network adapter and VM hardware levels. In addition, this enables you to run the two installations side-by-side to perform testing before moving users to the upgraded release.
Best practice
For practical guidance on how to apply a patch to your standalone appliance or cluster, refer to Apply a File Director patch.
In-place upgrade
In-place upgrades are the most straightforward and ensure that all File Director appliances are of the same version. When using in-place updates, your system will remain offline during part of the upgrade. See Apply a File Director patch for further information.
In-place upgrades are only available for patch upgrades. For 2024.1, only a base image upgrade is available.
Side-by-side upgrade
If you want to evaluate or test a major version upgrade before applying it to your production environment you may want to perform a side-by-side upgrade. This approach allows you to maintain continuity and keep your existing File Director appliance(s) running while creating a new set of appliances using the newer version. This approach requires additional infrastructure and resources.
To ensure that your clients continue to synchronize with configured map points after the upgrade:
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Back up your current appliance configuration (see Backup and restore).
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Restore the configuration to your new appliance or cluster.
If you do not restore the configuration on your new installation, each client will perform full conflict resolution. Under these conditions, the client attempts to download the server copy of every file in order to recreate the local metadata. If you have a large number of files and users, this can dramatically increase the load on your network.