Prepare a smooth ride for GSA upgrade with mirroring

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With the new release of Google Search Appliance 7.2, many organizations have plans to upgrade their systems in order to take advantage of the new features. Here is a list of steps with brief description that could help you for a smooth ride during the upgrade.

• Stage installer files
  For production upgrade, you would like things run as smooth as possible. The installer file for software upgrade is quite huge. It would be better to stage it before hand.

• Backup configuration with Admin console for both primary GSA and replica GSA.
  In case you need refer to early configuration, that’s a version of complete truth.

• Disable traversal connectors
  If there are other feed clients running, stop them as well.

• Disable mirroring

• Trigger the failover to replica GSA
  As a mirroring system, there must be a mechanism to force either primary GSA or replica GSA is used to serve search result. This is the time to rely on the mechanism to direct all the user search requests to replica GSA so that the upgrade procedure can be done on the primary GSA.

• Upgrade primary GSA

  • During software upgrade, select the option ‘Migrate the configuration and the search index’.
• Once the upgrade of primary GSA is done, verify the following settings for GSA:
  • SSL settings
  • Certificate Authorities
  • Configuration of Authentication mechanisms
• Switch over to the primary GSA to serve user search using the mechanism we mentioned earlier

• Verify the search features, especially the secure search if applicable.

• Enable the traversal connector, and any feed clients so that content update can be send to the primary GSA from now on.

• Upgrade the replica GSA

  • During software upgrade, select option ‘Migrate the configuration’
• Verify the serving feature from replica GSA if applicable
  • Failover to replica GSA may be needed. Once the verification is done, you need switch back to primary GSA as normal setup.
• Enable the mirroring

Every system is unique. You may run into issues that were not seen by others before. It’s always a must practice to run the upgrade in test environment in preparation for production system upgrade.
Good luck.