Upgrade to Orlando

[Padma17]

We are planning to upgrade our instances from Madrid to Orlando once it is released. But I heard that it is always a good practice to upgrade the instance following n-1 . I mean a version older than the new one to be on safe side without any negative impacts. Could you please suggest us to wait until the Paris release or can we upgrade the instance in March or so once the orlando is released.

[Noah Drew]

Hello Padma!

Instead of waiting for a whole other release cycle, consider upgrading once the first Patch is released. This should cut out many of the possible bugs you may face.

Hope that helps!

If it did, please mark as Helpful and consider setting the reply as the Correct Answer to the question, thanks!

[jwkline1]

My personal opinion is that based on the features/enhancements introduced with each major release, we can't really afford to go with a N-1 upgrade strategy.  We thoroughly test our upgrades and recently went from London to New York with almost zero defects or issues.  We are also in the process of developing ATF scripts to further enhance our upgrade process.  Our plan will be to go to Orlando on the first official GA release.

To each their own, but I see no issue with going to Orlando in Q1 this year.

[Keith Barrett]

Hey Padma,

ServiceNow provides many resources to help with the upgrade process. This Upgrades article provides links to all the relevant tools and content to assist in the upgrade process. There's also an explanation of our End of Life (EOL) Upgrade Program in this article that will help answer some of your timing related questions. Ultimately, since you will need to be on N-1 effective the Orlando release, if you're not sure you want to go to the current Orlando release in March, you can simply upgrade to New York instead and still be within the N-1 policy.

[Mike Duffy]

Keith,

For that example for companies on Madrid that need to be N-1 compatible, they were in compliance after the New York release, but when do they become out of compliance with Orlando?

As soon as it is released? Or, can they wait for Orlando Patch 1 for example and plan to test and upgrade to that Patch level when it is released?

If its the former, then you basically will be upgrading to a new release twice a year and staying 1 behind current release, if you do not want to migrate to new releases as soon as they are out.