Upgrading a Sharded Environment

Since Liferay DXP 7.0, Liferay removed its own physical partitioning implementation (also known as sharding) in favor of the capabilities provided natively by database vendors. Upgrading a sharded installation to Liferay DXP 7.1 requires migrating it to as many non-sharded Liferay DXP installations (servers) as you have shards. These steps guide you through configuring the new Liferay DXP servers to use your formerly sharded data and upgrading the data to Liferay DXP 7.1.

Note: Liferay continues to support its logical partitioning capabilities (also known as virtual instances) for the foreseeable future.

For any further assistance with sharding contact your Liferay account manager or Liferay Support.

Here are the upgrade steps:

1. If you’re on Liferay Portal 6.1 or lower, upgrade to Liferay Portal 6.2.

2. Remove unneeded objects from your portal.

3. Prepare for upgrading to Liferay DXP 7.1.

4. Run the upgrade process for the default shard. As part of the configuration, copy all of the shard JDBC connection properties from your portal-ext.properties to your portal-upgrade-database.properties. For example, JDBC connections for a default shard and two non-default shards might look like this:

   jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.default.username=
   jdbc.default.password=
   
   jdbc.one.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.one.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_one?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.one.username=
   jdbc.one.password=
   
   jdbc.two.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.two.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_two?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.two.username=
   jdbc.two.password=
   

5. Prepare a Liferay DXP 7.1 server for each non-default shard.

6. Run the upgrade process for each non-default shard. The JDBC default connection properties in each server’s portal-upgrade-database.properties must specify the associated shard. Here’s how:

   • Add the original JDBC properties for the respective non-default shard database. For example, shard one’s original properties might start with jdbc.one:

     jdbc.one.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
     jdbc.one.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_one?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
     jdbc.one.username=
     jdbc.one.password=
     

   • Rename the properties to start with jdbc.default. For example,

     jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
     jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_one?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
     jdbc.default.username=
     jdbc.default.password=
     

7. In each server’s portal-ext.properties, use the JDBC default properties you specified in the portal-upgrade-database.properties (see the previous step).

8. Remove the non-default shard JDBC properties from the default shard server’s portal-ext.properties file, leaving only the default shard database jdbc.default properties. For example,

   Old JDBC properties:

   jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.default.username=
   jdbc.default.password=
   
   jdbc.one.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.one.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_one?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.one.username=
   jdbc.one.password=
   
   jdbc.two.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.two.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal_two?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.two.username=
   jdbc.two.password=
   

   New JDBC properties:

   jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal?characterEncoding=UTF-8&dontTrackOpenResources=true&holdResultsOpenOverStatementClose=true&useFastDateParsing=false&useUnicode=true
   jdbc.default.username=
   jdbc.default.password=
   

Congratulations! You have migrated off of a sharded environment to virtual instances on separate Liferay DXP servers. You have also upgraded to Liferay DXP 7.1. Your virtual instances are ready for action.