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‎09-17-2020 08:28 AM
Hello! I am a relatively new SNOW admin at my company and i'm working through the ITIL implementation currently. I am trying to come up with a standard on doing instance upgrades. How often do you upgrade your instance to the newest version? For instance, Paris just came out. Will you be upgrading to Paris within the next few weeks, skipping this release and waiting for the next, or waiting for Paris patch 2 or 3 before upgrading?
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‎09-17-2020 08:47 AM
Hello,
You'll most likely get a mix of responses regarding this but if you can afford to do so...staying at the latest version is always nice. I've done upgrades where we jump right to a version as soon as it comes out for general availability and then I've done upgrades where we waited until patch 2 or more...and then I've done upgrades where we were soooo behind that SN reached out and basically wanted to ensure we upgraded "soon" because we were many versions behind.
It all depends on your company's bandwidth to support doing the upgrades, the skill/experience of your SN team (Sys Admin) and how jacked up your environment is, haha, meaning how customized it is and how troublesome the upgrades become due to this.
If you've been with the company since they implemented SN and have knowledge and been a part of most of the development and you've followed best practices, then upgrading shouldn't be too time consuming or difficult.
If you're new to the company and devs that worked on various other customized things are now gone (so you don't have anyone to bounce questions on as to why this change was done and should you keep it or merge it or abandon it, etc.) and you've never done an upgrade before and...your version is several versions behind...it'll be a bit more difficult to get through.
So I've sort of given you the ideal approach and then the worst scenario that could happen.
Best of luck!
If you have the time, I'd recommend requesting an instance health check: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/success/quick-answer/...
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‎09-29-2020 04:33 PM
Hi Susan,
ServiceNow can have a patch each month are you not applying these patches ?
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‎09-29-2020 05:06 PM
We apply the required security patches during the 2nd and 3rd months of the quarter, but have only needed to do that once in the past two years. We do not apply other monthly patches aside from April and October.
Susan Williams, Lexmark
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‎09-29-2020 05:12 PM
Are you using ATF for testing each upgrade and patch ?
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‎09-30-2020 09:52 AM
Yes, however we are still maturing with ATF. We initially focused our ATF tests on customizations and are now starting to implement the quick start tests for OOB functionality. We also use the Test Management module (the original one, not 2.0) for testing functionality that cannot be automated. The process owners (i.e., change managers, incident managers, etc.) write the manual test cases, then my team automates what we can and leaves the rest for manual testing. We're just getting started on that transition from manual to automated.
Susan Williams, Lexmark
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‎09-29-2020 05:19 PM
Late in the game but my 2 cents worth.
the production instances are 1 version behind to ensure I have sufficient time to test thoroughly if all customization we've made works properly and to provide sufficient time for everybody to learn about the new features and changes. I have to update the user's guides and it's better to wait until GA comes out in chance that something may change before than.
Upgrade isn't just about having new features but on having end-users being able to use them.
However, I'm upgrading my personal instance before GA comes out to test new features and try to get any defects fixed and to get prepared so I'll have a better grasp of tasks that'll be necessary.
