Upgrade from v14 straight to 15.5?

[Matthewh]

Any pitfalls, is the process the same, backup, uninstall and restore, we currently host ourselves and use our own domain and certificate for the URL any advice from anyone on doing the upgrade would be appreciated.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @Matthewh

You can upgrade straight from v14 to V15.5 but you can only import your backup during the initial installation.
If you are using your own FQDN you will need to provide certificates for that FQDN during the install.
Also for the licence key to be upgraded to version 15.5 you will need to have an active maintenance.

I would recommend going through the installation guide included in the admin manual and the academy before proceeding.
https://www.3cx.com/3cxacademy/videos/basic/installing/
https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/

 

[Matthewh]

Thanks for the information, one last question, if I do a test installation from one of our old backups am I going to interfere with the connectivity on our production environment, I just want to go through the whole restore process and confirm all the steps as a test before doing it with the live server, if I did the installation with the network disabled so it cannot connect to the internet would that work?

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Please note that the V15.5 installer requires an active internet connection to complete as it will bind the licence with the FQDN upon installation. it will also require internet to activate the key. Without the machine being connected to the internet the installation will not complete

 

[Matthewh]

Right, so if I do go through with the restoration its liable to try and register the trunks and kick my registration off the live system and activate the key which might impact the live server so there is no way to test the restoration process prior to actually doing the restoration??

 

[Matthewh]

I don't really want to take a chance on testing the restore process without some feedback on this, if I restore the existing backup, I assume that it will take my existing registration offline and make a mess of the key activation on the existing machine?

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

What you can do is take a backup from V14 and save it in a non 3CX location. Then un-install v14 and install v15.5 using the backup and the licence you already have. If you face any issues during or after the installation you can revert back to v14 using the backup you have,
As long as you have active maintenance you can do that. This will also mean that you will activate V15.5 on the same machine with the same MAC address so you do not risk hitting the registration limit. This is a risk you run if you try to install 3CX on a different machine while the V14 is still active.

 

[haywardi]

I curious about this as well. My process is that I have a live machine and a sandbox machine. When upgrading 3CX I take down the live machine, installed the new version on the sandbox machine and test, test, test. If there are any problems I simply delete the sandbox and switch the live back on, I repeat this process until I'm happy the upgrade is successful (not that I've had that many problems upgrading 3CX but telephones are critical so I don't take chances). Clearly if testing is successful, then I upgrade the live machine.

However, will something break? I'm currently running 14 and considering moving to 15.5.

Thanks in advance
Iain