Upgrading to the latest release

If you’re familiar with previous releases of Hyperledger Fabric, you’re aware that upgrading the nodes and channels to the latest version of Fabric is, at a high level, a four step process.

  1. Backup the ledger and MSPs.

  2. Upgrade the orderer binaries in a rolling fashion to the latest Fabric version.

  3. Upgrade the peer binaries in a rolling fashion to the latest Fabric version.

  4. Update application channels to the latest capability levels, where available. Note that some releases will have capabilities in all groups while other releases may have few or even no new capabilities at all.

For more information about capabilities, check out Channel capabilities.

For a look at how these upgrade processes are accomplished, please consult these tutorials:

  1. Considerations for getting to v3.x. This topic discusses the important considerations for getting to the latest release.

  2. Upgrading your components. Components should be upgraded to the latest version before updating any capabilities.

  3. Updating the capability level of a channel. Completed after updating the versions of all nodes.

Note

SDK applications can be upgraded separate from a general upgrade of your Fabric network. The Fabric Gateway client API has been tested with Fabric v2.5 and v3.0. If you have not yet migrated to the Fabric Gateway client API, you can migrate while using a Fabric v2.5 network, or after you have upgraded to a Fabric v3.0 network. The legacy SDKs are no longer maintained and are not compatible with new v3.0 Fabric features such as SmartBFT consensus.

Upgrading to the latest release