Upgrades always bring a significant number of Panel enhancements or even introduce new Panel features and behavior. After an upgrade, Panel increases its major or minor version:
Panel Upgrades and Release Tiers
During its lifecycle, each major Panel version passes through a number of development stages (see the diagram below). It is natural that on earlier stages, some of newly implemented features may not be in their final state and may require some further modification. The functionality of such features in subsequent Panel versions is improved as they receive more customer feedback over time. To indicate the stage of the current Panel version, we assign one of the following release tiers to it: Testing release, Early Adopter release, General release, and Late Adopter release.
Notes:
1. By default, testing builds are not shown as available for installation. You can install the testing Panel version only by running Parallels Installer with one of the special options. Learn more in the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide, chapter Installing Panel.
2. Upgrade to the next testing release is available only to the owners of a testing build. Subsequent Panel builds do not have the corresponding option in the GUI.
The decision on what tier to use is absolutely up to you. For example, consider upgrading to the early adopter release if you want to try new features before the general availability of Panel. On the other hand, if you want to get the solution that received all major updates and is successfully used by a number of service providers, wait until Panel gets the late adopter release status (it may be a couple of months after the general release).
Once you have decided what version you need, set up Panel to notify you when upgrades to the chosen version become available. After you select the version type in Tools & Settings > Update and Upgrade Settings, Panel will check for upgrades once a day. When an upgrade with the selected release tier becomes available, Panel will notify you on the Home > System Overview. Note that Panel always notifies you when a version with a "higher" release tier becomes available. For example, if you set Panel to notify you about early adopter releases, you will still receive all upgrade notifications about general and late adopter releases. However, if you decide to use only late adopter releases, notifications for all early adopter and general release upgrades will be skipped.
The diagram below shows the rough Panel lifecycle (the version numbers are given just for example and do not have any correlation with the real ones).
Applying Panel Upgrades
As upgrades imply multiple changes in the product and may require significant downtime, Panel does not apply them automatically. Instead, it displays upgrade notifications on the Home page. Once you receive such a notification, you can initiate the upgrade either from the Home > System Overview or Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades at any time that suits you.
The scenario described above is called in-place upgrade as Panel components are updated within one server. However, there is another way to upgrade Panel - upgrade by transfer. This way implies transferring Panel data to another server with a later version of Panel. Upgrade by transfer is suitable, for example, when you want not only to upgrade Panel but also to move it to a more productive server or another operating system. To learn more about differences between upgrade ways and get detailed instructions on upgrading Panel, read the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.
Panel Upgrades and License Keys
Note that some Panel licenses do not grant the permission to perform complex upgrades (upgrades that change the major version number: e.g. from 10.3.1 to 10.4.0). If you attempt to perform such an upgrade, Panel will warn you about license limitations. Nevertheless, you will still be able to perform the upgrade. When it is finished, you will need to obtain and install the license key for the new Panel version. For more information about installing a license key after an upgrade, refer to the section Upgrading Your License Key.
Notes on the In-Place Upgrading Procedure
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autoinstaller3.log file located in the /tmp directory on the server hard drive.