Cloning & upgrade best practices

[Pintu2]

Hi ,

We are planning to upgrade all our 3 instances (DEV,TEST and PROD) from London to New York release.I have couple of options to go for upgrade and I'm not sure which one to follow :

Option 1 :

1.Clone DEV to TEST instance

2.Clone PROD to DEV insatnce 

3.Upgrade DEV instance 

4.Upgrade TEST instance

5.Upgrade PROD

In this case TEST will have a copy of DEV and DEV will have copy of PROD.The purpose of doing this is to have DEV configurations and some applications and data back up in TEST so we don't loose DEV setup completely.

Option 2: 

1.Clone PROD to DEV

2.Upgrade DEV

3.Clone PROD to TEST 

4.Upgrade TEST

5.Upgrade PROD.

In this case both DEV and TEST will have a copy of PROD.There will be no backup for DEV if we opt this.

I'm not sure which one would fall under best practice.Can any one suggest something?

Thanks in Advance

Appreciate your response.

[Pintu2]

Sure Allen.Thanks for your response.I really appreciate.

I actually started the jump start upgrade program with ServiceNow  and they cloned my DEV instance to temporary instance and upgraded. As you said that cloning PROD to DEV and TEST will be a good option for me now.Because ServiceNow provided me access for temporary upgraded instance (which is cloned & upgraded copy of my DEV) access valid for 30 days . So, if there are any issues in DEV probably I can sort out in that temporary instance and start cloning PROD to DEV and upgrade and same thing for TEST instance.This is what i'm planning for London to New York upgrade.

[Allen Andreas]

Hi, sounds good!

Best of luck with the upgrade and if you have any other questions, let me know.

If my reply above helped answer your question and gave good guidance, please mark as Correct?

Thanks!

[Allen Andreas]

Hi,

I just wanted to check-in and see if your issue has been resolved. Please refer to my previous post. If this helped give guidance/answer your question, please mark it as Correct and Helpful.

Thanks

[Dubz]

I think cloning dev to test etc is overkill, you should be fine just exporting any open update sets to XML.

I tend to do that, the clone back from prod, re-import everything and then upgrade dev to the latest release. I'll then spend a few weeks trawling release notes and confirming my processes aren't broken and then will upgrade test and prod.

[The SN Nerd]

If you are looking for a really easy way to backup your in-flight Update Sets, check out this blog:

How to Backup Your Update Sets in 4 Easy Steps

TLDR: Batch all your in-flight Update Sets so you can export them ALL in ONE CLICK!