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Application Updates

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All updates to the Kion application (version upgrade, changes to infrastructure, etc.) should be made through the kion-app AWS CloudFormation stack only. If there are changes you wish to make outside of the AWS CloudFormation template, please submit a ticket for assistance.

For detailed information about upgrading to specific versions, see Guidance on Upgrading

Updating with Internet Access

To upgrade the Kion application, perform an Update Stack operation on the current stack in AWS CloudFormation. You don’t need to perform an update to the Kion database stack (kion-db) unless requested to do so.

Before you start, download the latest version of the kion-app.json AWS CloudFormation template from the Deployment Guide or the release notes for the version you are upgrading to.

To update the AWS CloudFormation template:

  1. Login to the AWS console where Kion is installed.
  2. Navigate to the AWS CloudFormation service.
  3. Select the kion-app AWS CloudFormation template. Ensure it’s the application and not the database.
  4. Click Update.
  5. Select Replace Current Template.
  6. Upload the new AWS CloudFormation template you downloaded from the Success Center.
  7. Click Next.
  8. You don’t need to change any values unless there are new fields available.
  9. Click Next twice.
  10. Acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources.
  11. Click Update.

The upgrade will perform a rolling update on the application in about 5 minutes. All active users at the time of upgrade will receive a notification prompting them to refresh the page. If there are any failures or rollbacks, please submit a ticket to our Success Center with a screenshot of the Events tab.

Demonstration

Updating without Internet Access

To upgrade the Kion application for C2S and SC2S or when you don’t have internet access:

  1. Download the latest Kion archive from here. To download an older version, change the version number to match the version you wish to use.
  2. Add the archive you downloaded to the root of the S3 bucket you created during installation: kion-XXXXXXXXXXXX-state (replace the 12 Xs with your AWS account number).
  3. Follow the same steps from the Update/Upgrade with Internet Access section.

Ensure the S3 Bucket field still matches your S3 bucket in the AWS CloudFormation update process. The upgrade performs a rolling update on the application.All active users at the time of upgrade will receive a notification prompting them to refresh the page.

Upgrading Aurora

If you need to increase or decrease the database instance size, we recommend following these steps to reduce downtime. This should be very close to a zero-downtime upgrade. There may be a few seconds where the application has to reconnect, but a simple refresh of the page in the Kion application will resolve any issues.

To upgrade the Aurora database:

  1. Ensure you have at least one read replica.
  2. Increase the number of nodes to at least 2 in the AWS CloudFormation using an update stack operation. You will then have 1 writer database instance and 1 reader database instance.
  3. Make the changes to all the reader database instances. If you want to increase the size, increase it using the AWS console or the AWS CLI. This will not affect the Kion application.
  4. Once the database instances are back to the Available state, click on the writer database instance.
  5. Click Actions.
  6. Click Failover twice. This will promote one of the reader database instances to the writer. There may be a few seconds of downtime, but it’s generally not noticeable to users.
  7. Once the transition is complete, sync the AWS CloudFormation and upgrade the final database instance (which is the reader now) by updating the AWS CloudFormation stack with the new database instance size. You won’t experience any downtime during this process.