Upgrade path to 5.0 from 4.x

Good day

There is something that is somewhat bothering me.

http://www.sitefinity.com/versionnotes.aspx?id=2655 stats that to 4.4 you need to be at least on 4.2 SP1 or 4.3. (I assume that 4.2 SP1 is 4.2.1733 nice if you added the number)

4.2 and 4.3 release notes don't state anything about upgrade path so I assume you can take anything prior to 4.3 and then to 5.0

However if you have some 5-10 sites laying around that's a lot of extra work.

Since Telerik put so much work into migrating 3.7 solutions directly to 4.4 and later to 5.0 it really would be nice if it would be possible for 5.0 to be upgraded from any 4.x version.

So the question is will 5.0 also need me to update in two steps (my oldest site is 4.2.1650) because if this is true then its a real bummer and for many of us a lot of extra work.

If this is true, Telerik please consider what this means for any of us running more then one site. A whole lot of extra work. Upgrading, uploading, testing, deploying.

Hope 5.0 will be as gentle on 4.x as it will be on 3.7 :-)

Markus

@telerik
Has it been set or is it clear from which 4.x versions we will be able to update to 5.0?
Markus

Hello Markus,

 Sietfinity 5.0 would be like all 4.x versions, meaning that it will support upgrade from the two last official versions.
As for supporting upgrade from all 4.x versions, we are already considering this, but it requires a lot of implementation and time, so we will have to schedule for some of our more distant in time releases. Thanks for the feedback and the suggestion. Hope that Sitefinity 5.0 will live up to your expectations.

Dear Svetoslav

If you talk about the last two official versions assume you are talking about  4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, right? I would expect the following or are you refereing to last official versions as in 4.3.1885?


This would mean for any site released on 4.0 or 4,1  you need to make 2-4 updates to get to the current 5.0!!

So the update path would look like this

A 4.0 to 4,1 to 4.2 (does not updated from 4.0) to 4.4 to 5.0 (4 updates needed for a 1 year old site)
4.1 to 4.3 to 5.0 (2 updates needed for a 9 month old site)

I understand that SF 4 has undergone some major and minor changes in the 1st year. All I try to point out is that while you do everything possible to have 3.7 site users helped to migrate smoothly it might be not so easy for 4.x users.

Any update is usually a risk and even if it runs smooth takes some time for testing. And in big firms I even assume its more complicated to get stuff approved.

Luckily I upgraded some of my first sites to 4.2 already so i'm only left with a 2 step upgrade later to 5.0

This is of course all true if you refer to last official as 4.4, 4.3. As soon as you consider 4.2.1733 and 4.2.1650 two official versions then it looks worse and I might have to really spend some time updating site. And if you don't do it now it might look worse in the future. If you don't update as 4.2 site to 5.0 and decide to wait till 5.3 you might have to do 3,4 update steps to get back to current.

Sorry to bring that up again but working more efficiently also means for me a hassle free upgrade process.

Again I see that 4.x has undergone some change that make an direct upgrade process hard, and I fully understand if its not possible to 5.0 and I bite the bullet and spend the extra days upgrading - BUT please consider these thought urgently for the future.

Not every body has a new project and as time goes on we will have more and more sites - so every extra step will be worse. 1 Site on extra step extra 2-5 hours. 10 sites 10 extra steps 20-50 hours, 20 sites I am out for a week updating.

Markus

Hello Markus,

 I understand your concerns and we have taken these into consideration, but as I've pointed out, this would take us some time to implement, so with the release of 5.0 it wouldn't be supported to upgrade directly from 4.2, 4.1 or 4.0. 
By last two official versions I meant 4.3 and 4.4 (without the service packs or hotfixes). Of course, the best case is always to upgrade from the latest version. We understand that making a lot of different updates can be time-consuming but in the end it is always more efficient than skipping one or two versions and directly upgrading to the latest.

Dear Svetoslav
I can live with 5.0 being able to handle any 4.3 and any 4.4 version for the updates and I know Telerik is listening as usual.
Thank's for the great work you are doing
Markus

Dear Svetoslav
I can live with 5.0 being able to handle any 4.3 and any 4.4 version for the updates and I know Telerik is listening as usual.
Thank's for the great work you are doing
Markus

Two questions:
1 - Which week in february is 5.0 coming out?
2 - Is 4.3.1885.0 supported? I remember there was a hotfix that Telerik said they would support.

Thanks,
Andrei

Hello Andrei,

 We cannot give you exact release date yet. It will be in the end of February, but I cannot tell exactly when. As for the hotfix  support - there should be no problems upgrading from that version directly to 5.0. However, it is always better to go to 4.4 and then to 5.0.

Thanks Svetoslav,
I know it is best to upgrade to 4.4 and then 5.0, but the issue is, I do not have the target database. I do the upgrades on a copy of the live database and then upload just the WebApplication, which will then upgrade the database. Unless, I can just replace the contents of the Bin folder with 4.4 DLLs and then 5.0. Otherwise, the only option I have is to go straight to 5.0 and hope that your testing covered teh process well.
Thanks again,
Andrei

Dear Andrei

I asume (hope) that there are backups of the SQL database. So you could use one of the backups to test the upgrade process. Everything else would be like playing poker hoping a card would show up on the river ;-)
Markus

Markus, backups are my speciality. I would be lost without my backups. I don't go anywhere without them. So the answer is Yes. I always download the latest snapshot of the live database and test the upgrade against it. It is just that I cant have the system down for any longer than 30 minutes and that does not leave me enough time to get the Mirroring and all the other stuff sorted, hence it is always a question of uploading just the WebApplication. Which seems to be fine most of the time.
Andrei

Hi Andre,

Thank you for the interest in Sitefinity.
 All of the features that are coming with Sitefinity 5.0 (and in which it differs from Sitefinity 4.4) are listed in the roadmap (also restrictions to editions are mentioned there). In addition to these feature there will be a few bugfixes. What else in particular are you interested in?

Hi,

I found this thread after upgrading a 4.2-project to version 5.0. I can browse but not administer the web. I'm getting "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." trying to access [appURL]/sitefinity. (can't find any misconfiguration from IIS, compared to correctly running v5 projects)
I guess that the Sitefinity Project Manager should have produced a warning instead of swallowing anything older than v4.3.

No big deal in my case, small project, no more than a day to rebuild.

..sorry, this thread is better.