Platform Upgrades and Maintenance Windows
Please see our Platform Upgrade for Apptio Products page for specifics concerning basic upgrade information, and maintenance window timelines.
Automated Upgrade Validation
All Platform Upgrades are validated using our Customer Data Compare validation tool (CDC). The Upgrade Team will not schedule a Platform Upgrade without either a successful CDC validation, or a manual validation. CDC does not directly interact with live instances, and therefore has no performance impact. The tool compares the latest three months of available modeled and calculated metrics and reviews all model allocations, and YTD/Annual metrics.
Automated Upgrades
The Upgrade Team schedules recurring platform upgrades via our upgrade tool; customers may enroll in automated upgrades at any point to ensure regular quarterly upgrades to the current server build. These upgrades are scheduled on Friday evenings of the customer’s assigned week and time zone. However, they are subject to change at their request, starting with the first Friday of the month.
Default Wave and Week assignment for quarterly recurring upgrades:
1. Wave 1 occurrence: January, April, July, October
2. Wave 2 occurrence: February, May, August, November
3. Wave 3 occurrence: March, June, September, December
NOTE: This schedule structure is entirely based on the first letters of the customer instance URL names.
Ex: https://csbox-uswest.apptio.com would upgrade wave 1, week 4
Wave 1, Week 2 – (#-Br)
Wave 1, Week 4 – (Bs-D)
Wave 2, Week 2 - (E-I)
Wave 2, Week 4 - (J-M)
Wave 3, Week 2 - (N-So)
Wave 3, Week 4 - (Sp-Z)
Customers may request an upgrade on weeks 1 and 3 if that works better for their month-end process. If the customer chooses to upgrade on the 3rd Friday of their wave, this week has an adjusted upgrade window, due to AKP monthly resets.
EMEA & NA Week 3 upgrade window: Saturday, 12 am PT – Monday 6 am (regional time zone).
APAC Week 3 upgrade window: Saturday, 3 am AEST– Monday 6 am (regional time zone).
Customers enrolled in automated upgrades will receive an email 15 days prior to their scheduled upgrade date, as well as a reminder email three days prior to their upgrade date. The 15-day window allows the Upgrade Team time to validate the customer’s instance on the new build. The window also provides customers with enough time to make any planned check-ins around the Platform Upgrade window.
Ad-hoc Upgrades
Platform Upgrades can be scheduled based on customers’ request for those not enrolled in the automated upgrade system, or outside of the customer’s automated upgrade window.The CSM will coordinate any off-cycle upgrades with the Upgrade Team.
FAQ
Q. Are Testing Environments available for review before scheduling a Platform Upgrade?
A. Test environments fall outside of the scope of the Upgrade Team's validation process for a Platform Upgrade. If a Testing Environment is required please speak with an AM to purchase a Sandbox Environment for testing.
Q. Can an upcoming automated upgrade be postponed/canceled?
A. Upcoming upgrades can be canceled or postponed with advance notice; it usually requires a 24-hour notice for upgrades to be canceled after being scheduled. Since the cancellation process is manual, someone from the Upgrade Team needs to manually action the request. The Upgrade Team can postpone a scheduled automated upgrade by a maximum of two weeks at the request of the customer, via their CSM.
Q. Why was the upgrade postponed by the Upgrade Team?
A. According to the Upgrade Team’s policy, it is important to validate every customer before a Platform Upgrade can take place. Occasionally, our validation queue gets congested due to an influx of requests, latest releases, or complexity of validation results. In such cases, we may need to postpone upgrades that were not fully validated and notify the CSM of the postponement.
Q. Will I receive confirmation of a positive validation result? How do I know if my Platform Upgrade is scheduled?
A. The Upgrade Team communicates to the CSM when the validation is completed for a customer’s Platform Upgrade. An automated email is sent out three days prior to the update date if the upgrade has been successfully validated and scheduled.
Q. Does the Upgrade Team require customer action for upgrades?
A. The Upgrade Team may need permission to open a branch in the customer’s live instance and will require assistance from the CSM to request that permission. This is not always the case, and it entirely depends on the results of the automated validation. However, any need for the branch will be communicated to the customers.
Before any upgrade, we inform customers through the CSMs that their data remain identical during any new build or fixes or changes. Upgrades can sometimes involve configuration changes/fixes provided by the upgrade team for a customer to upgrade.
Q. The upgrade requires a fix/configuration workaround. Will the upgrade team handle it?
A. If the Upgrade Team provides a fix or configuration change for a customer’s upgrade, in most cases we will allow the customer to implement the fixes themselves, or they can request the Upgrade Team to implement the fixes we provide. However, depending on the severity of the issue, it may be required for the Upgrade Team to implement the fixes.
On demand, the Upgrade Team can check in fixes to the customer’s staging environment and promote them to production, ensuring the values remain intact over the course of an upgrade.
Q. How short of notice can an ad-hoc request be submitted?
A. The Upgrade Team cannot guarantee upgrade dates, as an upgrade can only be scheduled after a completed validation. CDC validation for a positive result can take up to three business days depending on the customer, though for any issues CDC may find that additional investigation time will be required for a manual review by the Upgrade Team. If the validation results require a manual review, the Upgrade Team will postpone the upgrade until the validation is complete.
Q. If issues are found during validation, what is the timeline for the upgrade?
A. Upgrade issues and resolutions can range from small configuration fixes to issues requiring engineering/code fixes. A fix is typically provided within a few business days of a negative validation result for issues involving configuration or model updates. However, for any fixes requiring a new build/hotfix/engineering intervention, there is no fixed time until the customer may upgrade. We may revisit the upgrade process once we have a fix.
Q. Should the Automated Upgrade fall on an international holiday weekend, does that change the process?
A. Customers with upgrades falling on Apptio holiday weekends will be rescheduled by the Upgrade Team, and customers will receive advanced notice of the rescheduling. Typically, this means moving the upgrade back to the following weekend.
NOTE: At the customer’s request, we can schedule upgrades during Apptio holiday weekends. However, support staff will be limited, and may not be able to immediately action upgrade issues.
Q. What projects are automatically validated?
A. Customers who have entered the automated upgrade system are validated based on their historical CDC data, so any previously validated projects will be automatically validated moving forward.
Should any new projects require validation after enrollment into the automated upgrade system, contact your CSM who can coordinate with the Upgrade Team to have the new project added to the automated validation.
Q. Can a Platform Upgrade to an older version of Apptio be scheduled?
A. The Upgrade Team's validation process was created around validating customer data against the current release of the product. As such we only run Platform Upgrades to the most recent release.
Process Overview
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