We are often involved with performing patch updates with customers. Generally these are relatively straight forward but every now and then we come across an issue in upgrading an instance of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. When this does happen we just need to make sure we’re prepared to revert back to the previous installation with the minimum fuss and hassle.
These days customers are often running their instance of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus in a virtual environment and I’ll assume that’s the case for the rest of this article. If ServiceDesk Plus has been installed as a single instance using the integral PostgreSQL database on a single server that certainly makes life easier as you can simply take a snapshot of a working server prior to attempting any patch update. It’s probably also worth including the SDP Build in the snapshot name or description for reference.
However, we have come across situations where a virtual server snapshot has been corrupt and could not be restored so it’s always advisable to take a full product backup using the inbuilt backup utilities, either with the ‘BackUpData.bat’ bin folder utility from an Administrative command prompt or via the GUI scheduled backup under ‘Admin > General > Backup Scheduling’:
The patch update utility itself will prompt you to perform a backup as part of the upgrade process but it’s worth performing a backup prior to taking the server snapshot, or saving the backup files to an alternative server, prior to starting the upgrade.
If you’re running ServiceDesk Plus with an MS SQL database on a separate server there’s a little more work to do as you need to take a snapshot of the application virtual server along with taking a backup of the current ServiceDesk Plus MS SQL database; this has a default name of ‘servicedesk’ unless it’s been changed. To take a backup of the MS SQL database use MS SQL Server Management Studio to connect to the database and right-click and choose ‘Tasks > Backup’ to perform a full backup :
As an alternative you could use a database snapshot but this requires some command line work to implement – one for another time.
To revert your ServiceDesk Plus installation when using MS SQL you would stop the ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus windows service on your application server, if is not been stopped already to perform the patch update, delete the now corrupt MS SQL ‘servicedesk’ database and restore the backup copy taken prior to the start of the patch update:
Then simply restore your application server virtual server snapshot and restart the ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus windows service. Hopefully then you should be back in the game!
If it’s all gone horribly wrong you should still have a full ServiceDesk Plus backup from the backup utilities to perform a conventional product restore; just remember you’ll need a ServiceDesk Plus installer of the same build as the original backup. You can get these from the ManageEngine Archive Directory for ServiceDesk Plus at the following link:
I hope that’s given you a little insight into some of the recovery procedures we often use when working with ServiceDesk Plus but, as always if in any doubt, have a chat with the Zoho support teams before you make a start on upgrading your system.
Enjoy!
