You’re ready for an Alteryx upgrade! Now what?
When should I upgrade my Alteryx Server Instance?
Alteryx has a standard rollout of new major versions of Server every quarter. The decision on how cutting-edge you would like to be is up to you. As a standard practice, some agencies wait a month after a new version has been released to upgrade. In the case of the 2022 versions, the releases were a little unusual and required some extra planning. 2022.1 is the most recent standard version. 2022.2 was the release of the first version of Alteryx Server that is FIPS-140-2 compliant. 2022.3 is the first version of Alteryx Server released with enhanced cryptography that makes this version incompatible with any previous version of Server or Designer.
What if my Designer users have a newer version than my Server instance?
Alteryx has a rule of thumb to follow the relationship between Designer and Server. Server is backward compatible, but Designer is not. If you find that your users have upgraded ahead of the version your Server instance is on, you have two options: you can either upgrade your Server instance or have your Designer users roll back their Designer instances.
Should I upgrade my Designer instances along with my Server instance?
With the 2022.3 version of Server, the changes were significant enough to require Designer instances to upgrade along with Server. If you are upgrading to a release 2022.1 or earlier, then as long as your Designer instances aren’t newer than your Server instance, everything will be compatible.
Should I upgrade my Sandbox environment first?
Industry best practices show that upgrading a test/sandbox environment ahead of a production environment is the proper way to introduce a new version of Server. This allows testing of the new version of Server with variables from within your infrastructure ahead of making the change to production.
If I choose to upgrade to 2022.3 or a newer version of Server, is there anything I should be aware of?
Yes. The breakdown of version-to-version upgrading below must be followed to ensure no unexpected errors arise.
If you are using Embedded MongoDB:
Server version older than 2018.1 needs to upgrade to 2019.2 before upgrading any further.
Server version 2018.2 – 2019.2 needs to upgrade to 2019.3 before upgrading further.
Server version 2019.3 – 2021.2 needs to upgrade to 2021.3 before upgrading further.
Server version 2021.4 – 2022.1 will need to run the Migration Tool pictured below and follow the instructions found here https://help.alteryx.com/20223/server/run-migration-prep-tool
The Migration Tool cannot be skipped. It is used to prepare all aspects of the current Server environment to seamlessly migrate to the new cryptography utilized in 2022.3 and beyond.
For a complete upgrade version-to-version breakdown visit the link below https://help.alteryx.com/sites/default/files/2023-02/Server%20Upgrade%20Version-to-Version%20Guide_v3_0.pdf