Upgrading Jamf 9.101 to Jamf Pro 10.7.1

We have finally reached the point where discussion about how we can upgrade our Jamf server, running an aging software version 9.101, to the latest, greatest Jamf Pro 10.7.1. I had the good fortune of being the one who got to set up a more-or-less identical testing environment, copy over the production database, and perform a test upgrade to see what might be broken, so that we can plan how to recover when we perform the upgrade to our production server.

Currently, our main Jamf server runs on a Windows Server 2012R2 VM hosted at our central office location. It was not considered worthwhile to spin up a similar VM to test the upgrade process, so I installed Jamf 9.101 on a Mac Mini we had on hand.

The first thing to mention is that, when setting up Jamf 9.101 for the first time, you need to carefully read the prerequisites presented by the installer, and you do need to read the documentation it links to on the Jamf Nation website. Before installing Jamf , you must install Java SE 8, the unlimited-strength Java Cryptography Extensions, and MySQL 5.7. Additionally, you need to manually create a database table and user for the JSS in the database. Once all of this is done, you can install the JSS like any other piece of software using the installation .pkg.

Now, my Mac Mini was running the Jamf 9.101 server software, but it was empty - no computers, no Policies, etc. The purpose of this testing was to determine what, if anything, would be broken by the upgrade process, so I needed to import a copy of our current Jamf database into this new instance.

The tool recommended to me on Jamf Nation, the Jamf Migrator, looked like a great place to start. This tool takes URLs and login credentials for two Jamf servers, a source and a destination, and uses the Jamf API to clone one server to another; alternatively, it can create an XML file from the source server that can later be uploaded to the destination server using the same tool. So, I downloaded this tool to my MacBook, gave it the information it needed, and clicked the "Go!" button. The tool reported that it was able to transfer some, but not all, of most of the things that it can transfer, but failed completely to move any Printers or Configuration Profiles. When I checked the Jamf instance on my Mini, I found that it had only actually moved over three computers. The same issue occurred after several more tries. I don't know what the issue was, but obviously, this tool wasn't going to work in my environment.

Luckily, Jamf provides a tool to back up and restore databases. I used the Jamf database tool to create a backup of our current database, then used it to restore that backup to the testing Jamf instance. This was much more successful than the migrator tool - all of our computers, Policies, Configuration Profiles, etc. were imported, and what's more, so were our VPP tokens and other system settings. I went into the JSS settings to change the JSS URL, turned off the SMTP server (so that my team members would not be inundated with emails from this testing environment), and made a few other changes to make sure that nothing funny would happen with the cloned instance running alongside the original. I enrolled a test Mac to this new JSS, and confirmed that everything was working.

I then set about installing the upgrade to Jamf Pro 10.7.1. No intermediate upgrades are required, so it is actually a very easy progress. The Jamf Pro 10 installer comes as a .pkg, just like the original Jamf 9.101 did, and all you need to do is to install it like any application. The Jamf Pro installer stops Tomcat (though I stopped it beforehand out of caution), installs the necessary updates, then restarts Tomcat. After the installation is complete, the web interface shows that Jamf Pro 10.7.1 is starting up, and eventually presents you with a login screen.

I logged in using the same credentials as I had before the upgrade. I was pleased to find that nothing appeared to have changed or broken - all of the computers appeared to be there, and their data appeared to be valid enough, and so did all of my Policies and Configuration Profiles. It appears that, at least in our case, the upgrade to Jamf Pro 10.7.1 will be painless. We'll see when we do it in production.