Best practice to release the Production instance

[masa0033]

We have 2(Dev, Prd) landscape  and implement a portal to let our end customer raise case through it.

But, we are afraid that the Prd instance temporary  have to be closed for 10 hours when we do  the major upgrade because enough test is required even though we have completed it in Dev instance.

So, how do you provide Prd instance to your users when you do the major upgrade?

I really appreciate if you could share your best practice with us to avoid inconvenient for users.

[asifnoor]

Hi,

Firstly you need to have at least 3 environments (Dev, Staging and Prod) and recommended 4 (Dev, staging, pre-prod and prod). Just having 2 instances (Dev and Prod) is a STRICT NO.

All your development should happen in Dev and all changes should be captured in the update sets. Whatever information that cannot be captured in update sets, they should be mentioned in a document (Release notes) which contains the manual changes that need to be done AND the update sets in the order in which they have to be committed.

Staging instance is where you should do all the testing and if any issues, fixes should happen in dev in NEW Update Set and push again. During this time, the release notes have to be updated back with the new changes and the order of the update sets.

It is recommended that you have 1 Update set for 1 issue/feature/change. Do not club multiple features into a single update set. Becuase if you have to revert in case, it is easier to revert only the relevant update sets and not all of them. 

Once all your testing is successful on staging instance, Your deployment should happen in pre-prod instance as per the release notes. And once this is done, you hand over this instance for UAT to client. Once the client reviews and confirm, you follow the same procedure on to the prod instance. If the prod requires downtime of few hours, it has to be planned mostly during the maintenance window and once in a month or bi-monthly depending on the nature of the fixes. 

It all comes to regular communication with the client and keep them informed of the entire upgrade/deployment process. If you can't have 10 hours of downtime, then you plan small releases like 1-2 features for few critical issues in every release and do the deployment.  Generally for an upgrade, since its 1-time tasks, it is something you or your manager should speak to the client and explain to them about it.

Mark the comment as a correct answer and also helpful if it helps.

[masa0033]

Thank you for the information, asifnoor.
 

[asifnoor]

Can you mark my comment as a correct answer and also helpful if it answers your question.

[asifnoor]

Hi,

Can you mark my comment which contains the relevant information as a correct answer and also helpful.