[00:00] In this lesson, we'll look at upgrading Ignition. We'll talk about the distinction between major and minor version upgrades, discuss some best practices for approaching both, and highlight the resources available to ease your upgrade path. The process for an upgrade using the Ignition installer is very similar, whether it's a major or minor upgrade, so, toward the end of this lesson, we will walk through a simple example to show you some of what to expect. Before we do anything with the upgrade process though, we generally recommend that you go to Platform -> System -> Backup and Restore and take a Gateway backup. That backup will contain a copy of your entire gateway, your projects, and all your configurations saved into one file. Regardless of whether you're doing a minor or a major upgrade, it's always a good idea to have a backup in the unlikely event that a problem occurs. When upgrading Ignition, a change in the first two version numbers, like Ignition 7.9 to 8.0 or 8.1 to 8.3, indicates a major or platform level upgrade.

[01:08] This is due to the substantial changes implemented across all Ignition subsystems and modules in those versions. Just a quick note, organizations wanting to upgrade from Ignition 7.9 or earlier to 8.3 should first upgrade their gateway to the latest version of 8.1. Skipping this step and attempting a direct upgrade from 7.9 to 8.3 will result in compatibility problems with the Gateway Network, serialization and data syncing, communication and storage. It's also important to know that if you're completeing a major upgrade, the Upgrade Guide is a vital resource. I'll hop over to this other tab and we can take a look. This guide will help give you critical information about potential or known issues that you may encounter. I've included the related links to the Ignition User Manual below this video, but I just wanted to highlight that there are update-specific guides that are available to help with leaps between different major versions, like this one. Our next step with any major upgrade is to take a look at our licensing.

[02:12] If you have a license applied, you'll wanna make sure that your license allows for upgrades. For example, if you've purchased a license for Edge or standard Ignition, and you'd like to do a major or platform-version upgrade, you may wanna reach out to your account representative to make sure your license is capable of upgrading. This step generally isn't necessary if you're upgrading Maker Edition or minor versions of Ignition. Speaking of which, if you're making a more incremental Ignition upgrade like from 8.3.0 to 8.3.1, where only the last number changes in the version identifier, it's considered a minor upgrade. Since that's the kind of upgrade I'd like to do, I'm gonna take the opportunity to look at the "New in this Version" page on the User Manual website first. I've included the link below. That User Manual section breaks down the changes and additions to the Ignition software in the most recent versions and gives us links to other helpful documentation.

[03:11] I can see that I'll get some great additions to my Ignition toolkit with this upgrade to 8.3.1, so let's get started. First, I'll hop back over to the Gateway homepage. Here we can see that I'm currently running 8.3.0, but I wanna upgrade to 8.3.1. The Inductive Automation downloads page offers different options depending on your operating system and preferences. Below this video, I've included the link to the downloads page where you can explore the choices and see what meets your needs best. For each OS, there are easy installers, generic zip files with a detailed README file that'll guide you through the process, and Edge-specific zip files. The generic zip can upgrade Edge, Maker, and standard Ignition, so you don't necessarily have to use the Edge-specific zip file to upgrade an Edge instance unless you prefer it. I've already downloaded the installer for 8.3.1, so that's the method we'll focus on for this demo.

[04:07] Upgrading with the installer is nearly the same process as installing Ignition from scratch, so we just need to run the installer and follow the steps. I'm on a Windows machine, but when you're running the installer, it's mostly the same process for all the different operating systems. One special note for Linux systems, though: The installer needs to run as a program, so there are some permissions you'll need to change on the file. For more information, please check out the Installing Ignition on Linux lesson, or take a look at the installation section of the User Manual linked below this video. I'm gonna go ahead and right click on the executable file and run the installer. I'll hit next and the Ignition installation path and Gateway service name will show in the installer wizard. When I try to go to the next step, the installer will detect that Ignition is already installed, and it'll ask us if we wanna upgrade. We do wanna proceed, so I'm gonna press the yes button.

[05:06] At this point, I'll switch over to the module selection area. This resembles what we might see in a fresh custom installation, but here we can pick and choose what we wanna upgrade from the list of available current and new module versions. Let's take a quick look at the Additional Modules tab. Ignition installers and zip files will try to upgrade all your modules, but they don't have any third-party modules inside of them. Those third-party modules will show up in this extra tab instead, like this MQTT recorder module. By default, it'll set the preferred action to "keep as is," which basically tells the installer, "Don't touch that module. Let's finish the upgrade process, and then I'll upgrade that module later." If I'd had the forethought to download a newer version of that module, I could select upgrade from the dropdown and simply pass in the .MODL file. I could also remove it if I didn't wanna use that module anymore. I'm gonna leave this at the default setting, and I'll hit next.

[06:03] It says it's ready to upgrade, so I'll click upgrade and it'll run through the whole process and restart the gateway. I'll fast forward a bit for the sake of time. Now our wizard is finished. We're ready to start Ignition, so I'll go ahead and click finish here. It should open up the browser and take you through a simplified version of our commissioning process, if needed. If there are any changes to the end user license agreement, you'll be prompted to accept the terms. The good news is you won't have to worry about ports or creating an initial user, since that info's taken from the previous configurations on the same Gateway. It'll remember your users and projects. If you wanna verify that the upgrade process worked, we can log into the Gateway. On the homepage, you should see that our version number has been updated. Upgrading Ignition is usually pretty straightforward, especially with minor updates. Just remember to back up your gateway, read the upgrade guides carefully, check your licensing if you're doing a more major upgrade, and you'll be good to go.