Simplify Server upgrade | In place upgrades

It sounds like upgrade without uninstall would be quite useful.

Very usefull. Many big organisations are affraid of migrating because in their procedures uninstall takes too much times. I recently upgraded with just a drop table instead of a drop DB to by pass IT involvment and get it done.

Oh yeah. Very useful.

Yes, currently upgrading from 2015.0 to the latest 2017 version and I wish it was simpler.

Also do many organisations have running test/acceptance servers to test the upgrade process or do they get by with just production servers?

I echo the same feelings. In the past I have installed on a new server, migrated all the workspaces, done some testing and once it felt right, flipped the switch to the new server. After a few weeks, I'd then take the other one offline. But it's such a hassle, not to mention having to justify getting a new VM etc. I would never upgrade in-place based on past experience, too much can go wrong and needs to be troubleshot...or troubleshooted? :)

Don't know how useful this is, but figured I'd drop it here anyway, but Engines can now be upgraded in place to take advantage of new features specific to running the jobs. But a complete software upgrade is still required to take advantage of new FME Server functionality (ie Automations in 2019).

Any update on this topic? Being able to easily upgrade an FME Server and FME Server Engine seems to be a larger need now. To keep up with the security patches, small changes etc - without reinstalling everything.

I confirm the requirement. With several users this topic often comes up, for them following server upgrades is becoming very complicated.

Glad to see this wish changing status. It should have been under consideration a long time ago. Hopefully it moves to a new and better status soon...

This would be amazing.

I think the biggest hassle when updating an FME Flow instance is the reconfiguration of https. With every update I have to edit multiple files. If you’ve done an express installtion, you also have to edit the configuration files of the application server (Apache Tomcat).

With the requirement to have a licensed version of ArcGIS Server in place on the same host as the FME Flow installation, it really makes it more expensive to maintain and test a new version of Flow.  It makes it very difficult to do an upgrade onto a new host so the in-place upgrade is the only option it seems.  But the outcomes can be hit or miss in terms of the new version of Flow interpreting workspaces as before. I now spend much more time researching bugs and developing workarounds after an upgrade. 

I think the architecture of FME application causing more problems as Safe develops more capabilities.  The challenge of maintaining compatibility with other applications like ESRI ArcPro is taking up most of my time.  Users and clients are forcing my hand when it comes to making a decision to upgrade Flow and/or Form.  The current architecture of FME is making this more difficult and all the more troubling dealing with the bugs in whatever version you’ve chosen for upgrade. Getting the latest version doesn't always fix you problem. Quite often it will create other problems and leave you no where to go.

I think a more streamlined process to install patches or upgrades is required as well as the ability to rollback version upgrades as needed.  I think this is required more so of of Flow than Form, but both would be ideal.

We have a development environment for non-production use, specifically to test upgrades and other changes, such as testing 3rd party transformers.  The risk would be prohibitive if we didn’t have this staging environment.  This is where we get our setup configured properly so we know what to do to set up a new production environment.  We also test our workbenches here first when upgrading FME Server/Flow.  It helps us find and fix problems before moving to the new version and makes the production cutover smoother and take less time.  I could only imagine the chaos that would happen if we only had a production environment.  We couldn’t live without our production environment for the time it would take to do an upgrade.

I’m surprised this suggestion is 9 years old and not implemented yet, it would be a very valuable addition. 

Also, with minor patching such as: 
https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/31265482270349-Security-Update-FME-Flow-Privilege-Escalation-Vulnerability#h_01JB2AENHZZVH4HB6BMFJ8RT2C

These could easily be made into a .exe