Upgrade Sitecore 10.0 to 10.1 in Azure App Service

Question

I'm looking for a guide step by step to upgrade existing Sitecore 10 to 10.1 without making massive changes to environment.

1. Do we need to spin new App Service webapp to start fresh installation process of SC10.1?
2. Is there a quick way to upgrade existing App service test environment without setting up new app service web app?

Note: We have migrated SC8.2 to SC10 in new Azure App service (Test/UAT) env. Still time to for us to go into production. With SC10.1 release we are in a view to upgrade existing test/uat to 10.1 Any help, guidance is most welcome. Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You have three options how to handle upgrade:

1. Lift and shift what you already have in terms of content, DevOps pipelines, and infrastructure and just take what you have in Sitecore 10.0, prepare new environments / app services with Sitecore 10.1, update NuGet references and deploy it there.
2. In place upgrade - Follow the official documentation located here - chapter 4.2.6 Upgrading from Sitecore XP 10.0.1 or earlier
3. Leverage latest Docker support introduced with Sitecore 10.1 and completely rebuild your deployment and infra strategy leaving App Services behind and reconfiguring everything using Docker or better Kubernetes Services in Azure. In this case, follow "Upgrade Container Deployment Guide" located here

Answer 2

• Identify the functionalities which are no more supported in Sitecore including any third-party add-ons/modules and it’s alternate
• Take database snapshot including complete application end-to-end
• Find details about all prerequisites. Check upgrade guide
• Find the details about custom code base including business and functional requirements
• Find the custom configurations and customization done into the Sitecore
• Find the details about all environments, code branches and which code branch deployed to which environment
• Identify the test cases which will be required to validate the migration
• Document existing Technical debt and issues -Finish all scheduled tasks
• Stop active A/B or MV tests
• Freeze Content Tree

At high level :

• Create Sitecore 10 instance on local system and setup server similar to PROD instance.
• Run the upgrade script of Sitecore 10.1.0
• Clean installation of Sitecore 10.1.0.
• Attach the databases and follow the Sitecore 10.1.0 upgrade guide
• Deploy your custom code (after binaries update) and patch configs
• Perform test cases
• Deploy updated binaries into the webapp
• Attach Sitecore 10.1.0 databases to Azure databases
• Change the connection string
• Deploy configuration files from the local Sitecore 10.1.0 instance to webapp