Best Practices

Version Selection Guidelines

• Read the Smile CDR versioning documentation
• For offline mode upgrades: target most recent major release if less than two generally available releases behind
• For online mode (zero-downtime) upgrades: use two-release intervals
• Always choose latest RXX release within a major generally available release (e.g. always choose 2024.02.R02 over 2024.02.R01)

Pre-upgrade Checks

• Verify Platform Requirements
• Choose your upgrade mode
• Choose your database migration mechanism
• Review the database upgrade impact assessment

Upgrade Sequence

• Take comprehensive backups
  • Database backups of Cluster Manager, FHIR Repository, Audit Log, and Transaction Log modules.
  • Critical directories (classes/, lib/, bin/, otel/)
• Stop Smile CDR services
• Perform database migration
• Update binary files
• Verify configuration settings
• Test system functionality