How to properly keep your Farm Up to Date

Tutorials & Guides
1

As it appears to me, there is not many professionals running IT Infrastructure as their main Job out there.

I have seen many threads, especially with version 1.3: “1.3 broke my client!”.

Do not upgrade right away!
Why is that?
If you enter a well Managed IT Department, you will likely find Most software and Operating Systems not on the very latest version. The reason is that there have been countless Updates which detroyed whole operating ITInfrastructures. Windows updates causing data loss and so on.

In general, it is almost always a bad Idea to upgrade the version on the first release day of an Update. Especially if it is a Major update.
May recommendation is to either stay behind one mayjor version, but be on the latest Minor (Service Pack) or to at lease wait some week or a little more until the dust is Settled.
It is very likely that bigger updates break something and that emergency patches need to be released the same or next day. If you wait a little longer you will likely find minor patches to be released ( eg. 1.3.1). I would wait further, until some time is passed and no update is released. The Dust will have settled and at least the major bugs should be fixed.

The only reason for me to Upgrade to a newer version would be if dealbreaking issues have been fixed or nessesary functionality added.

How to run an update

  1. First of all, If you have a larger farm (or lots on money on your wallet), I recommend a test setup.
    This should be some other computer than your farm. If you only have one computer, you may try with a virtual machine.
  2. Install the update on your Test machine. Make sure everything is working. Most issues will likely appear right away. Even so, continue testing the client for some time (e.g. I have the wallet 1.3 beta on my laptop to test it). Let your test farm run for some time. The Testfarm does not need to be big.
  3. If your tests were successful, do a quick research by looking into Github Issues or into the Forum. If you see countless threads with issues, wait until the issues are resolved/settled.
  4. I recommend to back up your database/keys etc.
  5. Install the update on your farm.
2

Didn’t we just say his in the " Chia v: 1.3 windows has a big issue thread?

1 Like
3

Yes thats correct. But this Topic is not related to chia 1.3. I tried to make a general tutorial which is also relevant for future Releases.

You will likely find simmilar threads than your mentioned one with future versions such as 1.4, 1.5, maybe even 1.3.4.
Hopefully it will help farmers with chia (or even other software) in the future.

4

Iwas late to see your warning​:pray::slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face:

5

This is sound advise, and I always follow the same logic.

However, if everyone starts doing this it will become a problem :sweat_smile:

6

will not happen :smiley:

also in companies, “everyone” (I know of) is doing this and its not a problem.
Also I testing on a separate node so I could submit bugs.

7

yes you’re right, there will always be enough people to test stuff out, and better be those who have more experience and less trouble fixing stuff if something goes wrong.

1 Like