Chapter 3. Upgrading JBoss EAP

Learn how to upgrade from one JBoss EAP 7 minor release to another. For example, upgrading from JBoss EAP 7.0 to JBoss EAP 7.1.

Important

If you are migrating from an earlier major release of JBoss EAP, for example, from JBoss EAP 6 to JBoss EAP 7, see the Migration Guide.

3.1. Preparing for an upgrade

Before you upgrade JBoss EAP, you need to be aware of the following potential issues:

  • If you back up and restore your configuration files when upgrading to newer releases of JBoss EAP, you might overwrite the new release’s configurations. This can disable new features in your upgraded JBoss EAP instance. Compare the old configuration to the new configuration, and only reapply specific configurations you need to keep. You can do this manually, or by creating a script that can apply the changes consistently to multiple server configuration files.
  • If you back up and restore an existing configuration for migration to a newer JBoss EAP release, a server restart updates the configuration files. These configurations files would no longer be compatible with the previous JBoss EAP release.
  • The upgrade might remove temporary folders. Back up any deployments stored in the data/content/ directory prior to starting the upgrade. You can restore the directory content after the upgrade. Otherwise, the previous version of the JBoss EAP server does not start because of the missing content.
  • Before to applying the upgrade, handle any open transactions and delete the data/tx-object-store/ transaction directory.
  • Check the persistent timer data in the data/timer-service-data directory to determine whether the data applies to the upgrade.
  • Before the upgrade, review the deployment-* files in data directory to determine active timers.

3.2. Upgrading an archive installer installation

You can upgrade JBoss EAP by downloading, decompressing, and installing a new version of a JBoss EAP release.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure that the base operating system is up-to-date.
  • Back up all configuration files, deployments, and user data.
  • Download the compressed file of the target JBoss EAP version.
Important

For a managed domain, upgrade the JBoss EAP domain controller before you upgrade to a newer release of JBoss EAP.

An upgraded JBoss EAP 7 domain controller can manage other JBoss EAP 7 hosts in a managed domain, provided the domain controller runs in the same version or a more recent version of JBoss EAP that the rest of the managed domain.

Procedure

  1. Move the downloaded compressed file to any location other than the location of the existing JBoss EAP installation.

    Note

    If you want to install the upgraded version of JBoss EAP to the same directory as the existing installation, you will need to move the existing installation to a different location before proceeding. This prevents the loss of modified configuration files, deployments, and upgrades.

  2. Extract the compressed file to install a clean instance of the new JBoss EAP release

  3. Copy the EAP_HOME/domain/ and EAP_HOME/standalone/ directories from the previous installation over the new installation directories.

    Important

    You must compare and update configuration files from the previous JBoss EAP version with files in the new version of JBoss EAP, because files copied from the previous release might not have features from the new release enabled by default.

  4. Review the changes made to the bin directory of the previous installation, and and apply the changes to the bin directory of the new release.

    Warning

    Do not overwrite the files in the bin directory of your JBoss EAP version. You must make changes manually.

  5. Review the remaining modified files from the previous installation, and move these changes into the new installation. These files might include:

    • The welcome-content directory.
    • Custom modules in the modules directory.
  6. Optional: If JBoss EAP was previously configured to run as a service, remove the existing service and configure a new service for the new installation.

3.3. Upgrading an RPM installation

Before upgrading your current JBoss EAP instance with a new JBoss EAP instance by using the RPM installation method, check that your system meets certain setup prerequisites.

Prerequisites

  • The base operating system is up to date, and you get updates from the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux repositories.

  • You are subscribed to the relevant JBoss EAP repository for the upgrade.

    • If you are subscribed to a previous minor JBoss EAP repository, you have changed to the latest minor repository to get the upgrade.
Important

For a managed domain, upgrade the JBoss EAP domain controller before you upgrade to a newer release of JBoss EAP.

An upgraded JBoss EAP 7 domain controller can still manage other JBoss EAP 7 hosts in a managed domain, as long as the domain controller is running the same or more recent version than the rest of the domain.

Procedure

  1. Upgrade your current JBoss EAP version to the newer JBoss EAP version by issuing the following command in your terminal: 

    # yum update
  2. Enable new features in the upgraded release, such as new subsystems, by manually merging each .rpmnew file into your existing configuration files. The RPM upgrade process does not replace any of your modified JBoss EAP configuration files, but it creates .rpmnew files based on the default configuration of your upgraded JBoss EAP instance.

Additional resources

For more information on JBoss EAP repositories, see the information on choosing a JBoss EAP repository and changing JBoss EAP repositories in the Installation Guide.

3.4. Upgrading a cluster

JBoss EAP does not support the creation of clusters where the nodes include different versions of JBoss EAP servers. All nodes within a cluster must must relate to the JBoss EAP version.

Procedure

  1. Create a new JBoss EAP cluster that comprises of nodes running the newest JBoss EAP version.
  2. Migrate all clustered traffic from your previous JBoss EAP release to a new cluster on your upgraded JBoss EAP release.
  3. Shut down your cluster related to the older JBoss EAP version and then remove its content.

Additional resources