Upgrading your Content Manager environment

Upgrade your Content Manager environment before upgrading your delivery and presentation environments.

About this task

Within this upgrade stage, you can perform a rolling upgrade. That is, you can gradually replace individual old Content Manager-related server-side software components with new ones, running old software alongside new software without downtime. This also works in a scaled-out setup.

However, a rolling upgrade comes with a few limitations:
  • You can only perform a rolling upgrade if you are upgrading from SDL Tridion Sites 9.
  • You must completely finish this upgrade stage before you can move on to the next upgrade stage; that is, you must have upgraded all of your Content Manager server-side software before you can start upgrading your delivery and presentation environments.
  • New functionality introduced in SDL Tridion Sites 9.1 cannot be used until the rolling upgrade of the Content Manager environment is finished.
  • If any of your Translation Manager server software components or Content Manager server software components have a different version from the other ones, Translation Manager does not work. For example, in an outscale scenario, if you have upgraded Translation Manager and one Content Manager server to 9.1, but have not yet upgraded your second Content Manager server to 9.1, Translation Manager does not work.

Procedure

  1. Upgrade your Content Manager databases:
    • Content Manager database
    • Topology Manager database
    • Translation Manager database (if using)
    • Audience Manager database (if using)

    Your databases are upgraded. Your old Content Manager server-side software continues to work normally with the new databases, and publishes to the old delivery and presentation environments as before.

  2. Gradually upgrade or replace your Content Manager server-side components. Just like your old software, the upgraded or new server-side software connects to the new Content Manager databases, and publishes to the old delivery and presentation environments.
  3. Repeat the previous step over time until all of your Content Manager server-side software has been upgraded or replaced.

    Your entire Content Manager environment is now up to date, and you can upgrade your delivery and presentation environments.