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, in a scaled-out setup, you can gradually replace individual old Content Manager-related servers with new ones, running old software alongside new software without downtime. But you must have upgraded all of your Content Manager server-side software before you can start upgrading your delivery and presentation environments.

Also note that new functionality introduced in SDL Tridion Sites 9 cannot be used until the rolling upgrade of the Content Manager environment is finished. Specifically, a Page with Regions created on a SDL Tridion Sites 9 Content Manager instance cannot be opened or published on an older Content Manager instance.

This animation shows the process of performing this part of your staged upgrade. Your installation may include all, some or none of the blue items.

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. Upgrade some of your Content Manager server-side software, or install new Content Manager server-side software. Make sure that the people using this Content Manager server also upgrade their clients. 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.