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I would like to have some feedback from some of you who have experience applying cumulative updates and hotfixes on Production environments. I would like some comments on these:
- How much time do you need since you download the update until it's in production?
- It seems quite intimidating, even installing a simple hotfix. For example, I download a hotfix, that fixes an issue with tax calculations. The models folder contains more than a thousand .model files. The hotfix manifest lists about the same number of hotfixes that are included in the same package, and the number of affected objects is even higher.
- The update process described by Microsoft looks like you are upgrading from AX2009 to AX2012. It seems like a lot of work to do, just to fix a small issue. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh335183.aspx
Apart from the full checklist you need to complete, It pretty much says that you need to fully test your environment before moving to production.
- In an environment where we have a lot of customizations, how safe is it to install such a hotfix? or worse.. to install a full cumulative update, like for example CU10 to CU12. Right now, i wouldn't dare.
- When there is a simple hotfix, why doesn't Microsoft just publish the modified source code, or at least keep it simple with an XPO? We wouldn't need to go through this nightmare, just to fix a little issue.
- What happened now, is that we've found a random issue with tax calculations. We are not able to reproduce it, but we've found Microsoft released some hotfixes related to taxes. We don't have a simple way to install just this a single particular fix, and hope that the "random" issue dissapears. Or even check if the Hotfix's code can give us a hint to the origin of the problem.
Sometimes it even happens that we detect an issue and fix it, and months later Microsoft releases the fix. Obviously, customer cannot wait for this, as they are in production. This means, I don't always need to apply all fixes released by microsoft.
Please comment and feedback about how you deal with applying small hotfixes, without affecting your full environment.
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Patching AX/ installing a cumulative update isn't anything like applying a patch to a different program.
Just to give you a estimates:
Customer which has next to no customisations in their system from and a narrow use of the system (best you can get) cu11 to cu13. 2 days patching 1 day testing 1 day rework 0,5 days release.
If you have more customisations, large datasets or a big difference between versions then we're talking weeks instead of days. I have seen larger updates (from R2 to R3) take upwards of 50 days in effort.
Why does Microsoft do this? Integrity! You need to update object C, but Object C references object B and B has been updated allso. And Object B references object A etc. Before you know you're updating 700 objects for one patched class.
I keep a fully patched enviroment around that if the need arises I can extract a patch myself. But this is only for customer who have locked themselves in with customisations and who are not going to upgrade ever. Once you go down that road there is no going back.
For every patch you need to have tested your enviroment and allso the data upgrade that might be needed. You even need to check the compatability of all components if you upgrade your binaries. (I have had DIXF and masterdata management failing on me a few times) Even if you're patching default AX components you still need to test it. I have seen Microsoft designate some beheviour of the system as a bug and disable it which a customer was using on a daily basis in their primary process!
The checklists for upgrade might look daunting and sometimes it is. They are not optional. It all depends on how many customisations your system has.
Hi there. I'm actually going through the same thing and have the same questions. I'm on AX 2012 R3 and we are going to install CU13 in May. We have considered this as an upgrade and have had our partner run full comparisons to our custom code (we are heavily customized) to make sure we wouldn't have issues. We are going to do a full round of system testing in April complete with test scripts. This has been a 6 month capital project for us. I have about 200 users and only use GL, AP, AR, Inventory, and Fixed Assets modules. I know this doesn't answer your questions, and I'm hoping someone else offers more insight.
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