Identify Your Destination

The first step in any upgrade journey is knowing where you're going. Choosing the right target version for your Quantexa platform is a critical decision that balances ambition with reality. It involves considering the latest available features, your infrastructure's capabilities, and your solution's current technical makeup.

The Goal: Aim for the Latest Version

Quantexa releases new major versions of its software approximately once a year, and new minor versions of all supported major versions once a month. The Quantexa documentation site provides more information on Quantexa versioning and supported versions.

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It is always recommended to plan to upgrade to the latest available major version. This ensures you benefit from:

• The newest features and capabilities to deliver more value.
• The latest performance improvements, bug fixes, and security patches.
• The longest support window, maximizing the return on your upgrade investment.

However, your ideal destination may be constrained by technical dependencies. The next sections will help you identify them.

Step 1: Assess Your Infrastructure Constraints

New Quantexa Platform versions may require updated versions of third-party software (e.g., Spark, Java, Kubernetes). Your infrastructure's flexibility can be a limiting factor or may require a long lead time to meet new dependencies.

You must document the available versions of relevant third-party software to identify which Quantexa Platform versions are compatible. 

Action: Complete the following compatibility assessment for your environment, using the Supported Software page on the Quantexa documentation site for information on supported third party software.

Third Party Software

Current Version

Maximum Possible Version

Latest Compatible Quantexa Platform Version

Multi-Use Case Consideration: If you are running a platform with multiple Quantexa deployments, consider if you will need to support multiple versions of third-party software simultaneously to accommodate different upgrade timelines.

Step 2: Assess Feature & Framework Compatibility

As the Quantexa Platform evolves, new components and frameworks are introduced to enhance capabilities and simplify configuration. This also leads to the deprecation and eventual removal of older components. Before you can upgrade the platform, you may need to migrate your solution to these newer frameworks.

Quantexa strongly recommends migrating to new components and frameworks as a separate project before starting the main platform upgrade. This isolates the impact and potential issues, simplifying troubleshooting and reducing risk.

Action: Document the key components and frameworks your solution currently uses to identify necessary migrations.

Component / Framework

Version

Latest Compatible Quantexa Platform Version

For more information, check out Quantexa features compatibility.

Step 3: Define Your Target Version and Pre-Upgrade Roadmap

Once you have captured the information from the steps above, you can make an informed decision. You will have a clear view of the latest possible version you can upgrade to and, just as importantly, the prerequisite work required to get there.

The output of this analysis should be two key artifacts:

1. The Target Version: A clearly identified major and minor version for your Quantexa Platform upgrade.
   • Example: Our target is Quantexa Platform v2.8.3
     
     
2. A Pre-Upgrade Roadmap: A sequence of mandatory projects or tasks that must be completed before the main Quantexa Platform upgrade can begin. This often involves infrastructure updates or framework migrations.

Action: Document your pre-upgrade roadmap using the table format below.

With these two outputs defined, you are ready to move on to the next stage of planning: Define Your Upgrade Approach.