Required Data: Assisted Update

Article ID:115001919212
4 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

I would like to update my Jenkins instance to the latest release.

What is an "Assisted Update"?

We recommend an "Assisted Update" for all our users to help guide them through their Jenkins updates to make the process easier and safer.

This process allows a CloudBees Development Support Engineer to review your instance and prepare a customized update plan which contains:

  • A summarized list of known potential issues you may encounter during the update, based on your current version, target version, plugin versions, build agents, and what we have experienced with other clients during their previous updates

  • Analysis of known issues your Jenkins instance(s) are encountering, or could encounter based on the data in the support bundles

  • Best practice recommendations on how to test before doing the update in production

  • Simple steps to follow when doing the production update

  • Recommendations regarding backups, so that if any issues occur during the production update, we can easily recover from them

  • A 30 minute consultation call to explain the update notes and give you a chance to ask any questions you may have regarding your update

If you are interested in this process, the next step would be to provide us the Required Data for an Assisted Update (below) on a new support ticket, as well as what timezone you are in, so we can get the Engineer in the best timezone to accommodate your regularly available hours.

Required Data for an Assisted Update

This article describes how to collect the minimum required information for planning an update.

If the required data is bigger than 50 MB you will not be able to use ZenDesk to upload all the information. In this case, we would like to encourage you to use our upload service in order to attach all the required information.

IMPORTANT : Origin and Destination Product and Packaging must be the same. Otherwise, it would be considered a Migration but not an Update.

Required Data check list

Support bundle

For each controller and Operations Center that is part of the update, generate and attach a support bundle for each to the ticket. You can refer to this document if you need any help: What is a support-bundle and how to create one

Supported instances can take advantage of our cbsupport CLI tool to help gather the required data. Please file a separate ticket if there are any issues installing or using the tool.

Additionally, for CloudBees CI on modern cloud platforms or CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise 1.x or 2.x, provide the following information depending on the instance:

Assisted update template

In order to gather all the information required data, please download the following template, fill it out and attach it to the Support Ticket. In the following, we explain each of the requested points:

  • Solution: Jenkins LTS, CloudBees Jenkins Distribution, CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise 1.x, CloudBees CI on traditional platforms, CloudBees CI on modern cloud platforms

  • Source Version: the version that you are currently running

  • Target Version: the version that you want to update to

  • Date/Period: the period when you wish to update your instance

  • Time zone: Time zone you would like to have the 30 minute update consultation call in

  • Cluster Information

  • Operations Center: Is there a CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center (CJOC)? What is the version of the CJOC? Number of HA nodes for the CJOC?

  • controllers: Number of controllers, versions of those controllers, number of high availability (active/passive) or (active/active) nodes for each controller

  • Executors: Number of dedicated executors

  • Installation Type: RPM, WAR, DEB, Windows Service, manual script, manually created service, …​

  • Backup

  • Strategy: Do you have a strategy for backup? How do you generate a backup? Is it a full backup (copy of the $JENKINS_HOME ?)

  • Storage: Where is the backup stored ? (S3, NAS, NFS, …​)

  • Frequency: How often do you backup your instance?

  • Validity: When was the last time you tested the backup?

  • Size: What is the size of the backup?

  • Test Environment:

    • For CloudBees CI on traditional platforms: This is ideally a full test environment with an Operations Center (if applicable) and controllers. This may require a test license, which your Customer Success Manager can create for you. The same version as well as all Plugin versions being used in production should be on the test Operation Center and controller.

    • For CloudBees CI on modern cloud platforms: There is ideally a full test/sandboxed environment. Alternatively, this could be a test controller which could be updated before other controllers.

  • Infrastructure description: Do you have a High Availability setup? Other Infrastructure elements/devices to consider: Load Balancer, Proxy, etc

  • Additional Information: Any additional information that could be relevant to the update (for example existence of a failover environment)