Important:
Upgrading Avaya Enterprise Linux operating system to 8.1 is mandatory because of the requirement for Java 1.8 and a 64-bit operating system.
Avaya recommends that you upgrade the operating system to get the latest fixes and any security updates.
For upgrades, Avaya Experience Portal supports the following operating systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x 64-bit or newer 7.x update
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x 64-bit or newer update
Avaya Enterprise Linux AvayaLinux-RH8*.iso.
For customers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.x or Avaya Enterprise Linux 6.x, it is necessary to upgrade the operating system rather than only upgrade the Experience Portal application.
To upgrade to Avaya Enterprise Linux AvayaLinux-RH8*.iso, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x 64-bit or newer 7.x update, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x 64-bit or newer update:
Upgrade Avaya Enterprise Linux if you have opted for the Avaya bundled server offer. There are two upgrade methods for Avaya Enterprise Linux:
Upgrade using an ISO image file: This upgrade method provides an auto upgrade of Avaya Enterprise Linux.
Upgrade with the software installation DVD: This upgrade method provides an auto-upgrade option to upgrade Avaya Enterprise Linux.
For Experience Portal 6.x or 7.x upgrades on Avaya Enterprise Linux:
For Experience Portal 8.x upgrades on Avaya Enterprise Linux:
Do a fresh installation of a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server if you have opted for the software-only offer and are upgrading from versions prior to Experience Portal 7.2.x.
For upgrades from Avaya Experience Portal 6.x or 7.x to 8.1, in-place OVA upgrades are not supported. The 8.1 OVAs must be deployed.
For upgrades from Avaya Experience Portal 8.0 to 8.1, in-place upgrades are supported via ISO.
Note:
This note is for Software-only customers.
Experience Portal does not bundle any packages that are obtained from Red Hat. Experience Portal provides a Prerequisite installer that installs all the Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages that are needed to install Experience Portal, provided that customers configure a valid yum repository on the system that contains all the required Experience Portal prerequisites. Customers can either run the Experience Portal Prerequisite installer standalone outside of installation or alternatively run the Prerequisite installer within the Experience Portal installer.
All OS packages required by Experience Portal are standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages except for php-process. The yum repository or repositories configured on the system must contain standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages plus php-process.
Note:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server does not support upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server.
To save your Experience Portal configuration while doing a fresh installation of a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, ensure that you create a backup of Experience Portal from System Backup menu in EPM. Ensure that you save the backup folder on a server that is not part of the Experience Portal system.
For more information about backing up Experience Portal data from the System Backup menu in EPM, see the Administering Avaya Experience Portal guide on the Avaya Support site.
Upgrade or perform a fresh installation of the Primary EPM, Auxiliary EPM and MPP software depending on whether the OS is upgraded or freshly installed.
Important:
You cannot run an older version of the Experience Portal EPM or MPP software on a server running the upgraded operating system. Therefore, ensure that you upgrade the Primary EPM, Auxiliary EPM, and MPP software to Avaya Experience Portal 8.1.
Experience Portal 8.x supports outcall using the Axis 2 based Web Service named VPAppIntfService. Experience Portal 8.x does not support outcall using the Axis 1.4 based Web Service named AppIntfWS that was supported in prior releases of Experience Portal (6.x and earlier).
Ensure that you upgrade all applications that are using Outcall Axis1.4 based web service named AppIntfWS to instead use Outcall Axis 2 based Web Service named VPAppIntfService.
If your Experience Portal system has Auxiliary EPMs, you can upgrade the Primary EPM while the Auxiliary EPMs continue to process outcalls.
If your Experience Portal system consists of multiple servers, you can upgrade the EPM server operating system and Experience Portal software even while the MPPs are in the running state. In addition, if you have multiple MPPs, you can upgrade an MPP while the other MPPs are in the running state.