Azure Upgrade from v9 to v10

Documentation talks about it here for both Cloud Services and Web Apps.

UPDATE
Here is the link for upgrade to v10 from v9

Thanks for the link, but it refers to v9 and I wanted to upgrade to v10.

So, maybe I should have given out more information; I did not setup the Azure instances or anything. I went into the marketplace and used the KenticoCMS item there and let it create everything. I then just FTP into the Web App to pull down the files. (I did make some custom web parts and etc. which I simply just FTP up to the right location.)

I did try adding the local Web App to the Kentico Installer Manager, but it says it is an invalid Kentico installation. I downloaded the Upgrade Utility for v9 to v10, but it won't even run because it throws an exception (Cannot locate the file Microsoft.Web.Administration...). Since I cannot upgrade the site locally, I am not sure what my next steps would be.

Hi Al One possible way is to install a clean version of Kentico 9 locally (be sure to have the same hotfix version as the Azure one). Then export your site from Azure, and import into your local site, compare folders and bring over all the custom files and assets. Then use that copy for upgrade and re-deployment.

Hmm. Not sure how to respond to that. I can run the Web App and DB locally already for the site; I have pulled all the CMS files via FTP from the Azure Web App and transferred the database locally; changed the connection string and site works fine. But I cannot upgrade the site using the utility provided for download (it throws an error).

I guess you would be saying: 1. Created a new v9 instance locally 2. Update it to the same revision that is in Azure 3. Take the exported site from Azure and import it locally 4. Update/upgrade that instance to v10 5. Fix/update any issues with custom code

And then? Deploy the entire local v10 web app instance back up to Azure? Does that sound about right? Just making sure here before I start off on an all day process. Plus I would have to take the site offline for how ever long it takes to copy up 300+ MB of files and move the SQL DB back up to Azure as well.

What about the SmartSearchWorker Role? How does that get upgraded?

Thanks again for all the answers so far.

Process in the documentation doesn't change from version 9 to 10. The only thing that's different are the API changes and that's something you can worry about after you get your overall process worked out. So read through the documentation and see how you can make it work.

I've updated my original answer with the new link for v10. You can follow the process there as I mentioned.

Hi Al The SmartSearchWorker is only for Azure Project (Cloud Service) which is different from Web App/site (Azure AppSerivce) which you install from marketplace. So you shouldn't need to worry about that part. And yes, essentially, you are recreating a web site project locally by export and import, then replace the copy you have in Azure AppService.

Last year I upgraded like 30 websites from 8.2 to 9. All of them were on Azure. Most of them had little or no custom code. This is the process I followed.

Always make sure that your local server has same hotfix as the targeted azure server hotfix no.

1. Copied down all the websites residing on a server to my local 9.0 (10 in your case)
2. Perform DB sanity check. Make sure there are no orphan pages and all page types are assigned to website(s) correctly.
3. Perform the upgrade.
4. Verify the upgrade process by doing an extensive QA locally with help of your QA team that everything is working as intended.
5. Make any API changes or Macros changes due to change in namespace.
6. Re-assign all macros through a Global admin.
7. Setup a connection between Kentico local and Kentico 9 through staging module.
8. Perform the Sync, re-assign macros and re-test again with the help of your QA.

Thanks, Chetan