9.2 Understanding Upgrade Process

When you want to install a newer version of an existing Identity Manager installation, you usually perform an upgrade. However, when the new version of Identity Manager does not support a direct upgrade path from your existing version, you must first upgrade to a version from which upgrade to 4.8 is possible. Alternatively, you can perform a migration to a new machine. NetIQ defines migration as the process of installing Identity Manager on a new server and then migrating the existing data to the new server.

Upgrade
Migration

In some cases, you cannot perform a direct upgrade. In such scenarios, migration is preferred. For example, if you previously installed Identity Manager on a server running an operating system that is no longer supported, you must perform a migration instead of an upgrade.

If you have multiple servers associated with a driver set, you can perform an upgrade or a migration on one server at a time. If you cannot upgrade the servers at the same time, the drivers continue to work with the different versions of Identity Manager until the upgrades for each server are completed.

IMPORTANT:If you enable features for drivers that are supported only on Identity Manager 4.8 or later, the drivers stop working on the servers with mixed versions. The older engines cannot handle the new functionality. This breaks the drivers until all servers are upgraded to Identity Manager 4.8 or later.

Switch From Advanced Edition to Standard Edition

Identity Manager allows you to switch from Advanced Edition to Standard Edition during the product evaluation period or after activating Advanced Edition.

IMPORTANT:If you have already applied Advanced Edition activation, you need not move to Standard Edition as all Standard Edition functionality is available in Advanced Edition. You must switch to Standard Edition only if you do not want any Advanced Edition functionality in your environment and want to scale down your Identity Manager deployment. For more information, see Section 11.0, Switching from Advanced Edition to Standard Edition.