CFMX 7: Upgrade Best Practices

Related Categories: ColdFusion

How many of you have been scouring Macromedia ColdFusion Support trying to find information on steps for upgrading to CFMX 7. While I haven't seen anything official, here's my best practice steps for upgrading. Understand that CFMX 7 is designed to install side-by-side with your CFMX 6.x (or any previous CF version) and it defaults to C:\CFusionMX7 or /opt/coldfusionmx7. With that in mind, here's what I would do for upgrades:

1. Back up existing site code and  existing ColdFusion settings:
   • The archive and deploy feature comes in handy here, but if you don't have that luxury (or if you're going from CF 5 to 7) then you'll have to come up with another method.
2. Read the Release Notes (RTFM).
3. Install CFMX 7 with the following options:
   Sub-components:
   • Only install the ODBC services if you are going to use JDBC-ODBC connections. Otherwise, use the supplied and third-party JDBC drivers.
   • Do not install Verity. If you need it, install Verity separately with the stand-alone installer (coldfusion-search-platform.exe).
   • Do not install the "Getting Started Experience, Tutuorials, & Documentation" on Production servers.
     
   Web Server Configuration:
   • Choose the "Built-in web server" option
     • This will install CFIDE (and cfdocs) to the CFMX 7 directory structure (cf_root/wwwroot/CFIDE)
4. After the install completes immediately run the Configuration Wizard by accessing the CFMX 7 Administrator: http://localhost:8501/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm.
5. When prompted, allow the Configuration Wizard to migrate your existing settings.
6. When you have finished the Configuration Wizard, check your migrated settings:
   • Verify the DSN connections
   • Ensure the proper mappings are created.
7. Now test your applications using CFMX 7. This will require you to do one of the following:
   1. Create new virtual web sites for testing the application against CFMX 7 (e.g. a site called Testing) and run the Web Server Confinguration Tool to configure it to use CFMX 7.
   2. Create mappings for the built-in web server in the cf_root/wwwroot/WEB-INF/jrun-web.xml that point to the application code.
   3. Copy your application code into the CFMX web root (cf_root/wwwroot) and run it from there.
8. Run the Code Analyzer in the CFMX 7 Administrator to help identify any issues.
9. Once you are satisfied your applications run properly on CFMX 7, run the Web Server Configuration Tool (if you haven't already) and configure the necessary web sites to use CFMX 7.
   1. If you tested with the built-in web server, you should disable it when enabling the external web server.
10. Uninstall the existing version of ColdFusion.
    1. I would also physically remove any remaining files or folders (and Windows Registry entries), then I would reboot.

Comments (0) | Print | Send | del.icio.us | Digg It! | Linking Blogs