Is Dual Version for me

Pros

• Controlled impact on customers – if any issues arise with the new system version, they will affect only a small group of customers (specifically, one customer batch). In that case, you simply transfer those customers back to the older release, so that those customers will not experience the issue anymore, while your team can deal with the issue in a non-urgent manner.
• Saved time – with Dual Version, you can cover a large gap in software versions in one “jump”, for example, update your system from MR85 to MR100. In contrast to a traditional update, you can only update your system to the nearest long-term supported (LTS) release. This means you would have to update first to MR90, then to MR95 and only after that to MR00. Since Dual Version eliminates the need for these “intermediate updates,” much less time is required from your engineering team for migration preparation and testing of main scenarios.
• Faster product launch – you can launch new products on the newer release system immediately after it is deployed, while the migration of existing customers is still in progress. This means you can bring new products to the market months earlier than you typically could.

Cons

• Additional hardware / cloud resources – for Dual Version migration, you will need additional hardware or cloud resources to support both the current (source) and new (target) versions simultaneously.
• Short service lock-out per customer – your customers will experience a short service disruption, lasting from several seconds to several minutes, depending on the number of customer accounts.
• Administration restrictions – during migration, some operations are restricted for the administrator, for example, changes in the configuration of existing products on the source system.

Reliability has been proven by successful migrations of other PortaOne clients. For example, you can learn about the recent ones in the video.

Typically, issues may arise in a new code that hasn't been verified in its various configurations. The crucial part of a Dual Version migration involves converting customer data from the old version to the new one. In this part, we do not develop new code; instead, we rely on the same code that has been used during our standard update procedures, which by this point has been tested multiple times in the PortaOne lab by our QA team, and executed in production by our clients. This is why we don’t anticipate any issues during the data transformation to the new version.

You can find a comparison of the Dual Version solution, traditional update, and zero-downtime update here.

Dual Version is currently available for the following PortaSwitch release jumps:

• from MR70-6 to MR85-6;
• from MR85-6 to any build of MR100.

Starting from MR100, you are free to use any long-term supported (LTS) release, which is any PortaSwitch MR ending with 0 or 5, and any build for both your current release (source) system and the newer release (target) system. For example, you will be able to “jump” from MR100-0 to MR105-6 or from MR100-3 to MR115-0.