Backup, Upgrade, and Recover Qlik Sense

01. Requirements

Although the QPI tool simplifies and automates unbundling and upgrading PostgreSQL server, it does come with specific requirements that must be followed for the upgrade process to be possible and to be completed successfully. These requirements are:

Disaster Recovery & Downtime

• Backup Qlik Sense.

  • Backups are critical.

  • You must have everything you need ready to restore your Qlik Sense server and PostgreSQL if anything goes wrong.

  • If you haven’t backed up your Qlik Sense server, run the backup tasks that we’ve created in the first part of this course to create a backup of your Qlik Sense server.

• Create a checkpoint.

  • If your Qlik Sense server is running in a virtual machine, remember to create a checkpoint so you would have a way to quickly undo and rollback changes in case something will go wrong.

  • See the Create a Checkpoint  lesson if you need a refresher on how to create a checkpoint.

• Plan for downtime.

  • QPI tool run time varies from several minutes to several hours.

  • Run time depends largely on the size of your repository database.

  • Make sure to plan and communicate expected downtime while you’re working on unbundling and upgrading PostgreSQL server.

System Requirements

• QPI tool must be run on Windows Server 2016 or newer.

  • This is because QPI tool will be installing version 14 of PostgreSQL which isn’t supported on an operating system prior to Windows Server 2016.

• You need to have sufficient disk space for the QPI tool to store the backup of existing repository database.

  • You can check the size of your databases by launching pgAdmin, selecting Databases, and clicking on Statistics tab.

• User account that you will be using to run QPI tool must have Administrator privileges on the server where QPI tool is run.

Qlik Sense Configuration Requirements

• QPI tool cannot be run on a patched version of Qlik Sense.

  • If your Qlik Sense server has a patch installed, I recommend upgrading Qlik Sense to a newer, initial release (IR) version.

  • You can check whether or not a patch is installed on your Qlik Sense server by launching QMC and checking bottom, right corner of the screen.

If you don’t see the word “Patch” after version name, that means that you don’t have a patch installed. For comparison, here’s a version of Qlik Sense with patch installed.

• QPI tool is supported only on Qlik Sense versions February 2022 IR and newer.

  • If your Qlik Sense server is running on a version prior to February 2022, upgrade your server to February 2022 or newer first and then run the QPI tool.

• The current PostgreSQL server must be version that is earlier than 14.8.

  • Currently, the latest version of PostgreSQL that QPI tool installs is 14.8.

    • If you already have version 14.8 of PostgreSQL installed, the tool is of no use to you.

  • QPI tool is currently unable to unbundle PostgreSQL server version 14.8.

  • To check the version of PostgreSQL that you have installed, go to the following directory and check the name of the folder located there:

    • C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Sense\Repository\PostgreSQL

  • In my case, I have version 12.5 of PostgreSQL.

02. The Process

Part 01: Unbundle and Upgrade Qlik Sense Repository Using QPI Tool

Assuming all the requirements are in place on your server, we’ll start by following the process to get a newer, standalone version of PostgreSQL server installed and existing database copied to the new database. This will be done automatically with the help of QPI tool.

Part 02: Uninstall Qlik Sense Repository Database Service

Once we confirm that the old, bundled repository database has been successfully copied to the new, standalone database, we’ll delete the old Qlik Sense Repository Database service. Then do another check to confirm nothing broke after the deletion of the Qlik Sense Repository Database service.

Part 03: Reinstall PostgreSQL Binaries

Next, we’ll reinstall PostgreSQL binaries to ensure that the remaining Qlik Sense services will continue to function well and that you won’t face any issues in the future when upgrading Qlik Sense to a newer version.

Part 04: Update Path Environment Variable

Lastly, we’ll update the Path environment variable to point to the new bin directory to avoid running into issues with running Qlik Sense backup scripts.