Qlik NPrinting Upgrade Steps and Best Practices

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This article documents the steps and best practices for upgrading Qlik NPrinting. 

Before you begin:

• The instructions apply to Qlik NPrinting 17.3.x and any higher versions
• If you plan to upgrade from Qlik NPrinting 17.3.x through February 2018 to any more recent versions, you must upgrade to Qlik NPrinting April 2018 before proceeding.
• The Qlik NPrinting April 2018 server installation file is available upon request; contact Qlik Support for details

Always follow the Upgrade Path as outlined in Planning your upgrade.

When upgrading from any Qlik NPrinting versions at or before 17.2.x, an additional Upgrade Path needs to be considered. See Upgrade Path of NPrinting 17.2.3 and lower versions.

Upgrade Preparation and System Requirements

• Review the Qlik NPrinting Release Notes for the version you plan to upgrade to: Qlik NPrinting Release Notes 
• Review your version's Qlik Help upgrade instructions: Planning your upgrade 
• Verify you meet the Compatibility Requirements for Qlik Sense and QlikView, as well as the System Requirements: System requirements for Qlik NPrinting Server and System requirements for Qlik NPrinting Engine 
• Qlik NPrinting must not be installed on the same computer as the QlikView or Qlik Sense servers; see Unsupported Configurations
• Verify you have sufficient storage available; the upgrade will fail with the following error if you do not have enough disk space: Backup process failed. System.IO.IOException: There is not enough space on the disk
• Verify you have internet connectivity to allow for new supporting components to be downloaded and installed
• Have the Windows host fully updated (Windows Update)
• We recommend clearing the Windows \temp directory associated to the user used to run the Qik NPrinting services before upgrading
• Do not uninstall the Qlik NPrinting Server before the upgrade; this is an in-place upgrade
• Do not perform a Qlik NPrinting Database restore at any point during the upgrade process; the relevant tables are updated by the upgrade process 

Additional space usage considerations

The following Qlik NPrinting backups and temporary folder are created during the upgrade process and will consume additional disk space:

• a pre-upgrade backup of the current Qlik NPrinting database
• a post-upgrade backup of the upgraded Qlik NPrinting database
• a temp files and folder backup, which is removed once the upgrade is completed; this folder requires three times the space otherwise needed for a manual backup.
  
  Example: If the backup is typically at 1 GB, this one will need at least 3 GB of free space
  
  Keep an eye on disk space consumption during the backup process. The Qlik NPrinting database temp folder contents are not compressed during the backup process and could expand exponentially.
  
  The pre- and post-backup files are stored in C:\programdata\NPrinting\

Back up the Qlik NPrinting Repository Database

While optional, we recommend this step. It will give you an idea of the database size, as well as provide you with a manual backup for convenience. 

1. Stop the Qlik NPrinting services
2. Open the Windows Service Manager (services.msc), and stop the following services:
   • Qlik NPrinting Engine (if you have a multi-engine site, stop all engines on all nodes)
   • Qlik NPrinting Scheduler
   • Qlik NPrinting WebEngine
   • Qlik NPrinting License Service (found in later versions)
   • Qlik NPrinting Audit Log service (found in later versions)
3. Create the folder C:\NPrintingBackups for your Qlik NPrinting backups

   Do not change any of the default paths.

4. Open a Windows command prompt with elevated (administrator) permissions to perform the backup:
   1. Change directory using the following command:
      

      cd C:\Program Files\NPrintingServer\Tools\Manager

   2. Copy the following syntax into the command prompt, replacing yoursuperuserdbpasswordhere with the Qlik NPrinting superuser password used during the first Qlik NPrinting install:
      

      Qlik.Nprinting.Manager.exe backup -f C:\NPrintingBackups\NP_Backup.zip -p "C:\Program Files\NPrintingServer\pgsql\bin"

      For any versions at or before February 2020, use:
      

      Qlik.Nprinting.Manager.exe backup -f C:\NPrintingBackups\NP_Backup.zip -p "C:\Program Files\NPrintingServer\pgsql\bin" --pg-password yoursuperuserdbpasswordhere

      Before closing the Qlik.Nprinting.Manager.exe command prompt window, ensure that the message completed successfully is displayed. The resulting backup file will be found in C:\NPrintingBackups.

Upgrade the Qlik NPrinting server

1. Follow the instructions in Upgrading Qlik NPrinting including a full stop of the services
2. Upgrade Qlik NPrinting server as documented in Installing Qlik NPrinting Server 
3. Restart the Qlik NPrinting server

If you have unnecessarily restored a Qlik NPrinting database after an upgrade, your Qlik NPrinting Scheduler and Engine service will fail to start. See Identify NPrinting Server restored with incorrect NPrinting database version.

Upgrade the Qlik NPrinting Engine

The Qlik NPrinting Engine installation must match the version of the Qlik NPrinting server.

1. Verify the services are still stopped
2. Upgrade the Qlik NPrinting Engine as documented in Installing Qlik NPrinting Engine 

Verify that all Qlik NPrinting services are running

1. Open the Windows Services panel and review all Qlik Nprinting services to ensure they are started
2. Log in to Qlik NPrinting as usual and begin working
3. Note that once the upgrade is complete, you will find two automated backup files created by the upgrade process that can be found here: C:\ProgramData\NPrinting. The upgrade process creates both pre-upgrade and post-upgrade backup files, which can be used for disaster recovery purposes. Product Version IDs and Upgrade dates are appended to these files. See examples below:
   
   201810041251491282_nprinting18.19.6.0_backup_old.zip
   201810041301581371_nprinting18.29.7.0_backup_new.zip
   
   Industry best practices for disaster recovery purposes recommend performing regular manual backups, including the Qlik NPrinting repository database. See Backup and restore Qlik NPrinting for details. 

Upgrade the Qlik NPrinting Designer

Finally, update all NPrinting Designers so that they match the Qlik NPrinting server and Qlik NPrinting engine version. See Installing Qlik NPrinting Designer for details.