I meant to comment on this sooner, as the initial release of SugarCRM 6.3 BETA was made available late last week and whenever this happens, a large portion of the community immediately downloads it and installs it.
It seems with every release, it is necessary to remind the community at large that BETA releases such as this one are intended for testing purposes ONLY. They should only be used for circumstances where, for example, one is curious about seeing the new functionality or perhaps contributing to testing efforts.
This should always be done using an install that is separate from your production instance. If you must test it with your data, create a copy of your production instance and upgrade the copy of your production instance. Do not upgrade your production instance to the BETA release.
You will find that BETA versions cannot be upgraded. Thus, whichever BETA version you install cannot be upgraded to BETA 2, BETA 3 or even the actual release version of the target version. As a result, if you upgrade your production system to a BETA version, such as 6.3 BETA, you will be stuck with that version and the onus will be on you to figure out how to upgrade it.
This could put you in a difficult situation as you might encounter problems with the BETA that hamper your usage of the system and the only recourse you will have available to you is your own ability to troubleshoot and resolve the problem.
In short, use BETA versions for their intended purposes ONLY: testing.
Is this still true?
ReplyDeleteWe have implemented 6.4.0beta2 a while back, and would like to be able to upgrade at some point .. even to 6.4.0beta5 or some later version.
I see now at http://www.sugarforge.org/frs/?group_id=6 that they have
Sugar CE 6.4.0 Upgrade
and
silentUpgrade CE 6.4.0beta5.zip
available. Is this something new and different, or is there still a problem upgrading?
Yes, it is still applicable. It applies to all releases.
ReplyDeleteAs a general rule of thumb, you should never use Beta level software in production. This is specially true for business systems such as CRM applications, like SugarCRM.
Thanks for your response, Angel.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone written hints or tips for us unfortunates who made the mistake of actually using the big blue "Download Now" button that was a beta, and now wish to move to another beta (or, later on, to a subsequent production)?
What about the "Sugar CE 6.4.0 Upgrade" or "silentUpgrade CE 6.4.0beta5.zip" currently posted at http://www.sugarforge.org/frs/?group_id=6?
Thanks much for any tips!
There are some tips/hints on the SugarCRM Forums (sugarcrm.com/forums), but I am not aware of a comprehensive guide.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with attempting to write such a guide is that the potential of the information varying by large degrees is very real because it would be dependent on the version of the Beta that you are on and what you want to upgrade to.
I suspect this is a large part of the reason that deters others from writing such documentation. It certainly deters me.
As for the files you reference, they are for upgrading older versions of Sugar (e.g. 6.2, 6.3) to 6.4. There are 2 techniques to upgrading, one via the Upgrade Wizard and the other via the silent upgrade process which requires shell/command line access.