8.3 Upgrade Strategy at Large Org

Ignition
1

Looking for a gut check / general advice on our 8.3 strategy. We have DEV, TEST, 8x PROD gateways. We also have a “hub” gateway for each environment. Each PROD gateway represents a manufacturing facility with their own set of applications (not identical). 10 developers all work on DEV (no Docker) and write commits.

All gateways are currently on 8.1.48 and we are considering upgrading DEV to 8.3, and then waiting a week or two before doing TEST, PROD.

My concern is, we can’t exactly stop migrating commits during this time frame (supporting production). Will it be a problem to move commits from 8.3 to 8.1? Gateway event scripts concern me the most but other than that I think its fine? Anything to watch out for?

Thanks,

2

The folder structures are different in many places, and a v8.1 to v8.3 leaves some orphan files in the old folders (no longer used). You will likely have to inspect every commit you pull from 8.1 to 8.3.

3

In this case, the commit would be written on 8.3 (DEV) and pulled into 8.1 (TEST/PROD). If you were in my shoes, would you upgrade all servers at once?

4

I would run separate dev/test machines purely to shake out any v8.1 to v8.3 upgrade issues, before touching the regular dev/test/prod. Once you have a plan for issues identified, if any, upgrade the regular dev, test, and prod together.