TeamCity upgrade
Hello,
We currently use a fairly old version of TeamCity (10.0.4 - build 42538). We would like to upgrade to the latest version (2020.2 - build 85487). I still have to review the website's documentation in more detail but wanted to ask a couple of questions if possible.
- Is it possible to upgrade directly from 10.0.4 to 2020.2, or does it have to be done incrementally (i.e. upgrade to some intermediate versions before getting to final state).
- In general what would the best approach be? I am thinking of installing the new Version, backing up the configuration from my old version, and then trying to apply that configuration to the new version.
- Are we required to also upgrade the build agents as a result of this upgrade?
Thanks,
Jair.
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Hello Jair,
First of all, I would like to suggest this article: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/upgrade.html#Before+Upgrade
Some of the key points are:
1) sure, you can upgrade to the 2020.2 directly (database converters will be executed one by one automatically, for every version in-between);
2) you may want to review the Release Notes (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/upgrade-notes.html) prior to check if there are any changes that could affect your existing workflow; also, if you have any Enterprise licenses, the license keys might require a replacement;
3) if you aim to make a copy of existing installation for the sake of upgrade, then please mind the backup from an older version cannot be applied to the newer version. Thus, the recommended approach would be to copy the installation first (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/how-to.html#Create+a+Copy+of+TeamCity+Server+with+All+Data), e.g. install a clean 10.0.4 release, apply a backup from the production TeamCity installation and then upgrade this copy to the target version. Once the upgrade is over, you could review if everything looks good and then switch over to the new installation;
4) agents do not require a manual upgrade; once an agent is connected to the newer TeamCity server, it will automatically pull newer binaries and plugins from the server.
I hope this helps; if there is anything else I could help with, please let me know.
Hi Fedor,
Thank you so much for the detailed guidance. We upgraded this past weekend and all seems to be working well. Your help is much appreciated.
Had one follow up question if that's OK. My understanding is that with the newer version, the capability may exist to have one build deploy to multiple different target environments. Previously I believe we could only have one build going to one environment automatically. Do you have any guidance on this (i.e. an article I can review, etc)? We'd like to see if we can get one build to automatically deploy to multiple environments rather than just one.
Thanks,
Jair.
Hello Jair,
I suppose that you refer to the agent-less build steps feature which has been introduced in 2020.2. Idea of this feature is as following - if a process is handled outside of TeamCity logic (say, you run a deployment via third-party tool and just need to wait until it is done), then there is no reason to have the agent busy while the process is ongoing. The feature allows to detach agent at any moment of the build and report the build status later, from the external source - as soon as the agent is detached, it can pick up the next build to process. This is particularly useful with the external deployments use case - if an external service handles the deployment, you can trivially start multiple deployments to essentially run in parallel (please mind there are still licensing limitations - if you have, say, 10 agent licenses, then you can run 10 detached builds and 10 regular builds at the same time).
Please find the details on this feature here: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/detaching-build-from-agent.html; should you want any details on the feature, I will gladly assist.