Perform an upgrade with a real backup and a real rollback

applied · 70 min · Objective 1.3

Task

Upgrade the disposable guest in place, having first taken a backup you verify by opening a restored file, and then exercise the rollback. This is the objective applied end to end, and the rollback is the half that is almost never practised.

Steps

  1. Create identifiable user data on the guest, back it up to a location outside the guest, and verify the backup by restoring one file elsewhere and opening it. Record all of this in lab/inplace/backup.csv with header item,backed_up_to,restore_tested,opened_ok.
  2. Record the pre-upgrade state in lab/inplace/before.csv with header item,value covering version, build, free space, default browser and installed application count.
  3. Perform the in-place upgrade. Record how long it took and any prompts in lab/inplace/run.md.
  4. Record the post-upgrade state using the same headers in lab/inplace/after.csv, and write lab/inplace/changed.md listing everything that differs, marking each as kept, reset or removed.
  5. Exercise the rollback from the recovery options, confirm the machine returns to the previous version, and record the result and the time taken in lab/inplace/rollback.txt.

Verify

awk -F, 'NR>1 && $4 ~ /yes/ {n++} END {print n" verified backup item(s)"}' lab/inplace/backup.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=2 {n++} END {print n" before item(s)"}' lab/inplace/before.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=2 {n++} END {print n" after item(s)"}' lab/inplace/after.csv
grep -Eic 'kept|reset|removed' lab/inplace/changed.md
grep -Eic 'rolled back|previous version|succeeded|failed' lab/inplace/rollback.txt

At least one backup item verified by opening a restored file, five state items recorded either side, and a rollback result. A backup row with restore_tested empty is an assumption, which is the point this lab is making.

Notes

The rollback window is about ten days and it closes when the previous installation is deleted -- including by a disk cleanup run to free space. That is why the timing of this exercise matters as much as the steps.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA A+ Core 2 220-1202 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.