Decide whether to upgrade the entire Rational® ClearQuest®: environment at the same time
or upgrade in phases. Both strategies offer their own advantages and
disadvantages. In the end however, all clients and Rational ClearQuest servers
must be upgraded to the same release.
Upgrading everything at one time
By upgrading
all servers and clients at the same time, you can avoid problems that
result from supporting software components from different releases.
All features in the new version are available immediately. However,
the
Rational ClearQuest environment
is not available until these tasks are complete:
- All clients and servers are upgraded
- All changes are made to the user databases and schema repositories
- All packages are upgraded
- All other IBM Rational products
are reinstalled.
Any unforeseen problems must be resolved before the environment
can be made available to users.
Upgrading in phases
When you upgrade in
phases, the ClearQuest environment
is down for several short periods and problems are addressed in each
phase. This strategy reduces the risk of excessive downtime for the
entire environment as a result of unforeseen problems during the upgrade
process.
- Planning considerations
- Identify which Rational ClearQuest servers
and clients to upgrade first and which to upgrade later. For example,
you might want to upgrade the clients and servers for one project
team before another team. If some people belong to both project teams,
consider whether upgrading their clients affects their ability to
work with the user databases for the second project.
- In the first phase of the process, upgrade any client, server,
and vendor database software versions that do no meet the system requirements
for the new Rational ClearQuest version.
- If you plan to raise the feature level, do not raise it during
a phased upgrade. Because mismatched feature levels can cause compatibility
problems, raise the feature level only after you upgrade all ClearQuest
clients and servers.
- If you have a MultiSite configuration and want complete bidirectional
replication between all sites, upgrade all Rational ClearQuest MultiSite
synchronization servers and Rational Shipping
Servers at the same time. You can upgrade MultiSite environments in
phases if the environment can tolerate periods of unidirectional replication.
During these periods, some sites do not receive updates from other
sites. If you upgrade synchronization and shipping servers in phases,
plan carefully to avoid problems that result from systems and data
that are not synchronized.