Maximo Upgrade Process

Maximo SaaS environment upgrades are provided as part of the customer’s subscription. Upgrading is a jointly owned responsibility between the IBM SRE team and the customer. 

Customers are encouraged to maintain Maximo within two minor version (.dot) levels of the current supported Maximo version and not allow their environments to reach End of Support (EoS). Customers are notified when environments start to approach EoS and need to be upgraded. Notifications are sent via CCC as well as through direct email to customer primary contact(s).

The SRE scope and description of the Maximo upgrade process is below.



Note:

• 
The IBM SRE team provides technical Maximo upgrades. This means SRE is responsible for installing the new version of the software, upgrading the customer’s source database to the new version level, and bringing up the new environment

• Customers are responsible for regression testing and remediation. This includes testing and remediating any unique or modified screens, reports, integrations, java class file extensions

• The Maximo upgrade process requires planned outages and downtime

. IBM SRE will work with customers to schedule the upgrade during mutually agreeable timeframe(s)



• The initial upgrade is typically performed on a lower environment first (usually DEV or TEST) depending on customer preference

Process Overview



• Customer must first submit a case requesting the upgrade. The case should include, at minimum, the source environment URL and desired time frame for the upgrade

. This case will be used to track the overall upgrade process and provide status.

• Once the source environment has been identified and scheduled, IBM SRE will:

• Make a backup of the source environment

• Perform a backflow of the production database to the source environment (to insure data consistency). This optional, but highly recommended

• 

Install the new Maximo version and all applicable Industry Solutions and components on the application server

• Upgrade the database using the Maximo upgrade utility. Troubleshoot and resolve any errors or issues encountered.

• Upgrade all applicable Industry Solutions and components. Troubleshoot and resolve any errors or issues encountered

• Apply the most recent IFix(es). Troubleshoot and resolve any errors or issues encountered

• Start up the new environment and insure the login screen comes up

• Hand the environment over to the customer along with the new URL (if applicable)

• Customer is then responsible for regression testing and remediation. This includes any custom or unique screens, reports, integrations

• IBM SRE will support the customer during the testing and remediation process as needed through case ticket(s).
 This can include involving IBM Maximo product support as needed

• IBM SRE and the customer will repeat the same process as above for additional (higher) environments, or backflow a copy of the upgraded database into other environments, depending on requirements

• 

The production upgrade may require more than one iteration (for example a dry run). This can be arranged and scheduled with CDS if required

Additional items may also be covered by the IBM SRE team as part of the process. This may include re-configuration of applicable SFTP, RDC and VPN accounts, attached (linked) documents and other customer and/or environment specific items.