Moving Content Manager to a new environment

When upgrading Content Manager, you may need to also upgrade the environment where Content Manager is installed. In this scenario, follow the upgrade process outlined in this section.

About this task

There may be times when the hardware on which you are running an existing software component is unsuitable for use with the upgraded Tridion software. It could be that the hardware is not supported by the new version or is perhaps generally outdated. Whatever the reason, you will want to upgrade your hardware in addition to your software.

If your upgrade of Tridion Sites involves new hardware or an operating system upgrade, you are technically doing a fresh install of the software on the new hardware; however, functionally, you are still doing an upgrade. In most cases, there are customizations, configurations, and other settings from the old environment that need to be moved to the new machine. Always follow the process outlined in this section and the upgrade instructions, not the installation instructions.

This is a broad outline of the upgrade procedure. The upgrade topics explain if and how special tasks need to be performed when upgrading to a new machine. For a more detailed analysis, contact RWS Professional Services, or one of the partners of RWS, to have an upgrade scan performed for you.

Procedure

  1. Run a pre-upgrade check to discover any and all content in the Content Manager database and Topology Manager database that is no longer supported, by accessing the installation media and running the PowerShell script \Database\DBMS\Pre-Upgrade check Content Manager Database for not supported content.ps1.
  2. Remove all content reported by that script from the Content Manager database and Topology Manager database. Tridion Sites 9.6 no longer supports legacy content.
  3. Upgrade your existing Content Manager database and Topology Manager database to an Tridion Sites 9.6 Content Manager database and Topology Manager database.
  4. Referring to the installation section, perform a fresh Tridion Sites 9.6 Content Manager server and Topology Manager installation on the new machine. As part of running the installer, set up connections to the upgraded Content Manager database and Topology Manager database in the process.
  5. If you had configured integrated authentication for the Topology Manager database in your old setup, repeat that configuring now.
  6. On your existing Content Manager server machine, decrypt the encrypted sections of the following files:
    • Tridion.ContentManager.config
    • The Web.config file of Topology Manager, if modified
  7. From your existing Content Manager server machine, back up, or make a note of, all non-legacy customizations you have made to Content Manager, specifically:
    • Event System code (custom Event Handler DLLs)
    • GUI extensions
    • Custom Pages
    • Custom Multimedia Type icons
    • Custom resolvers
    • Custom renderers
    • Custom transport extensions
    • Any custom software that interacts with the Core Service
    • Customized PowerShell Modules
    • Custom ECL providers
    • The ECL configuration file, if modified
    • Translation Manager extensions or customizations
    • Experience Optimization custom triggers or Cartridges
    • The file Tridion.ContentManager.config, in general
    • Logging settings in Tridion.ContentManager.config, which must be migrated to the NLog.config file
    • The web application definition file, Web.config, for Topology Manager, if modified
    • All changes you have made in the MMC Snap-in

    Note that any legacy extensions are not supported in Tridion Sites 9.6, so you cannot migrate these to the new environment.

  8. Reapply the custom configurations you made in the various configuration files, by comparing each old customized configuration file against its new, out-of-the-box equivalent, and copy-pasting only the customized parts from the old configuration file into the new one. Note that the MMC Snap-in is now a deprecated feature, therefore RWS recommends to reapply any changes you made to its settings directly in the Tridion.ContentManager.config file instead.
  9. Re-encrypt the sections you had previously decrypted in Tridion.ContentManager.config and Topology Manager's Web.config.
  10. Restore or reapply the other backed-up customizations on your new Content Manager servers, taking care to check if your code still points to valid URLs (say, of the Core Service). If your Core Service runs on a different host in your new setup, obviously you need to update your custom code URLs as well.
  11. If your customizations included Custom Pages, do the following:
    1. On your Content Manager server, go to the subfolder web\WebUI\Editors\CME\Configuration\ of %TRIDION_HOME%.
    2. Open CME.config for editing.
    3. Within the <customconfiguration> element, add the following line:
      <custompagesfolder xmlns="">Preferences</custompagesfolder>
    4. Save and close CME.config.
    5. On your Tridion Sites 9.6 installation media folder, go to the folder \Content Manager\Additional Tools\Upgrade Support\.
    6. Run the Custom Pages migration tool, CustomPagesMigrationTool.exe.
  12. If your customizations included Custom Multimedia Type icons, run the Multimedia Type Icons migration tool, MultimediaTypeIconsMigrationTool.exe from your Tridion Sites 9.6 installation media folder \Content Manager\Additional Tools\Upgrade Support\.