CUCM+CUPS+CUCX 12.0 to 14.0 | Why is PCD recommended?

[RITR]

According to the 14 Upgrade and Migration guide, PCD is recommended when upgrading CUCM, CUPS and CUCX together. Is there a specific reason for that? I'm not seeing a reason anywhere and I prefer to manually upgrade through Web/CLI.

[Jonas Fraga]

Hello RITR.

PCD is recommended because it's automates several steps on upgrade and also are possible to install a fresh new cluster with same or less downtime availability instead of replace version on same Virtual Machine (all that automatically done by this tool). The PCD automatically starts the backup, install of fresh new cluster, restore backup data, shutdown old cluster and bring up new cluster with low manual activities.

Even with that you can do manually upgrades replacing the same VM ou even create a new cluster and do the same steps as PCD manually.

[RITR]

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@Jonas Fraga wrote:

PCD is recommended because...

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Makes sense, I just wanted to be sure the recommendation was not coming from some complex steps that are hard to perform manually.

[Nithin Eluvathingal]

For migration and upgrade I always prefer to use PCD, Why because it automate the complete  task. only thing I need to do is monitor the process. PCD making engineers job easy. You can schedule the task and PCD will do migration  for you. 

[RITR]

Ok, I'm going to say the recommendation is due to unknown reasons. Usually when something is recommended it's for a specific reason like "If you don't use PCD, then you run the risk of _________" but I'm not seeing an answer to that beyond "then you have to do it manually."

For the record, I updated manually without PCD and it went fine. The only quirk was Unity rebooted to v14 immediately even though "Do not reboot after upgrade" was selected.

[Nithin Eluvathingal]

Its a normal behavior for unity.

[Jonas Fraga]

There is no risk of not using PCD on your upgrade/moving process. It just make more easy to manage and less human error like.