tc Server upgrade fails with the tcruntime-instance command

Products

• VMware Tanzu tc Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
When attempting to upgrade tc Server runtime from a major version to another major version, for example, version 7.x to 8.x, the installation fails with the error message “upgrade failed”.

The entire error message is: "upgrade failed. It is not safe to upgrade an instance whose version is '7.0.62.A.RELEASE', to use version '8.0.23.A.RELEASE'"

Note: This error message uses versions '7.0.62.A.RELEASE' and '8.0.23.A.RELEASE' as an example.

Environment

Cause

The tcruntime-instance command does not support upgrading between major versions of the Tomcat Runtime. 

For example, you cannot upgrade from version 7.0.62.x to 8.0.23.x as you're jumping a major version. This limitation is due to the fact that there can be large changes across major versions, such as the removal or deprecation of classes. In addition, there are other breaking changes that only occur in major Tomcat upgrades.

Resolution

It is not possible to upgrade between major versions of the Tomcat runtime with the tcruntime-instance command. 

Instead, you need to create a new tc Server instance and migrate your applications and configuration according to the Tomcat migration guide for your new major version.

The migration guides explain the changes that occur between the Tomcat runtime versions and help you to upgrade your configuration and application so that they are compatible with the new Tomcat Runtime version.

See the following migration guides for reference:

• http://tomcat.apache.org/migration-85.html
• http://tomcat.apache.org/migration-8.html
• http://tomcat.apache.org/migration-7.html