Dear Clients,
This is the planning of the rescheduled upgrade of the Voyced Hosted IPPBX platform to the next stable version, V6.0, over the weekend of March 22th - 24th 2019.
Description:
As always, any upgrade will be tested very extensively in our testing environment before actual implementation so that the upgrade on the live systems should go through quickly and without a flaw.
The upgrade itself is separated into two parts spread over two overnight maintenance windows and we'll create separate announcements for these steps as pre-tests have passed correctly, we get nearer the time and plannings are set.
Step 1 involves
Date/Time: 22nd/23th March 2019 23:00 to 07:00 (approx.) UTC
Impact: Minor Impact. Anticipated total downtime; 10-20 minutes
Test reboots of the related servers (on all geographic locations and all servers clusters) into the preinstalled V6.0 partition.
This ensures there are no issues when booting from the new root partition.
Servers will then be booted back into v5.5.
The process can take between 1 and 2 hours, with no set times for restarts.
This stage requires the minimum of downtime and will allow us to check that the update to the new release is successfully performed and to determine if there are any network issues.
Reboots can cause up to 10 minutes of downtime.
Step 2 involves
Date/Time: 23rd/24th March 2019 23:00 to 07:00 (approx.) UTC
Impact: Major Impact. Anticipated total downtime; 8-10 hours spread over the various geographic locations (3-4 hours on each geo-site, starting with the redundant sites)
The DB of a given site will be updated during the window, followed by a reboot into the new partition, followed by application of the fresh configuration.
We anticipate some issues after updating the main site, so the large window between Stage 2-1 and 2-2 will allow ourselves and PortaOne to investigate and resolve any immediate service affecting issues.
The main downtime occurs during the Database update.
The servers will be rebooted several times.
During the Database update and server reboots, Hosted IPPBX and SIP services will be down.
The downtime for this second part of the upgrade can take up to 4 hours.
SIP servers will be prioritised to minimise downtime on calls and previous experience learns us that this will be quite minimal.
Since the configuration server will be updated to new release during the 1st stage, the logging features might (temporarily) be affected.
The good news and just some of the new options this will give us all
This updated will give many new security and stability features and will further implement the geographic redundancy that we have started to roll out in 2017 and have made available for Free to the whole of our customer base as the first major service update in 2019.
If you have not setup/changed your local devices and/or systems to use Geographic redundancy, we strongly urge you to do so a.s.a.p.
All the information you need is in our Basic Setup knowledgebase article, as always.
Amongst the numerous improvements, additions and preparations for future features in the background, there are many new and improved features for you, the user.
The following is only a limited list of functions that are improved or added that you will see/experience on your user side:
- Call transfer recall so that your 'blind' transferred call come back to you if the transfer does not get picked up
- Higher security which includes the much asked for Extended length password
- xDR download enhancement
- Many new enhancements that will help us troubleshoot any issues, such as registration issues, you may come across
- We're extending the API calls library so we can create even better and more integrated custom solutions for your situation
- Preparation for enhanced support for IPv6 endpoints
- Added language support for a few new languages and we've updated some languages too
- Custom prompt for the dial-by-name directory
- Sound Quality Check IVR function
- Call Barring Management
- Enhancements to the VoiceMail services and messages
- Extended configuration of music on hold for Call queue and Call queue announcements configuration enhancements
- Further improved handling and troubleshooting of audio streams and single audio issues where the user's local equipment doesn't 'follow the rules'
- Improved Paging / Intercom function
- and much, much more
All user-side functions will be made available as soon as we can and we will notify you of the important ones separately.
So, make sure that you are subscribed to the mailing list(s)!
(you can always check your mailing list subscription with our support team)
We thank you for your patience and understanding and apologise for the inconvenience that this essential maintenance work may cause.
If there are any questions or concerns, please contact our technical support team.
Kind Regards
the Voyced Technical team
Sunday, March 17, 2019
