Snow’s Approach to Product Upgrades

Title

This article explains Snow’s approach to version updates for product issues.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are reproducible product issues documented at Snow?

Once an issue in Snow products has been identified, a problem record (“PRB”) is created with detailed description of behaviour, error messages, replication steps and other details. Once the issue has been fixed, the record is updated with information about the corresponding resolution (typically a new release version). For more details on how you can track the status of a problem please see this article .

How are fixes for product issues released by Snow?

New fixes are incorporated into new versions. Older versions do not receive hotfixes or services packs that can be applied.

Any exceptions?

Occasionally workaround hotfixes are implemented into existing environments. However, this is often not technically feasible or recommended (see details below). On the occasions where hotfixes have been possible they are deployed only until the permanent fix is developed. The fix will be incorporated into the next release, at which point any hotfixes will be considered deprecated and a full version upgrade will be required.

Why can't my existing version be hot fixed/patched?

We understand the desire for a hotfix or patch as an alternative to a complete upgrade, but it's not always possible when you consider:

Extracting the affected code and supplying it as a patch is not often technically possible to do in a way that would be any easier to deploy than an upgrade.
The affected issue will of course be tested, but it may not be possible to put a hot fix through an entire release testing cycle (which are scheduled and resources allocated in advance). This is just one reason why a hotfix is more likely to introduce a risk to product quality or future upgrades.
Hotfixes are unplanned interruptions to the overall software release cycle. As sophisticated enterprise software, Snow products require software engineers with specialist skills to produce releases. For this reason the production of a hotfix (potentially for one individual customer) may impede the release of the full product for all Snow customers.

Are all fixes documented?

Snow publishes all Problem records to customers and partners through our Known Issues area on Snow Globe. Despite our best efforts, not all fixes are documented. This may be due to:

Unnoticed minor issues being fixed inadvertently in a later version without ever being documented
An issue triggering different behaviour or error messages, depending on the customer data and environment. This means that a specific customer issue cannot always be matched perfectly to an existing problem record: even if the root cause is the same

How does Snow determine when to require upgrades as part of the support process?

Snow engineers will consider the following factors before recommending an upgrade to customers:

Whether the issue behaviour and/or error message is consistent with an existing problem record and can be matched to a fix with high certainty.
When it’s not a 100% match, the likelihood of correlation to a similar issue's fix will be determined as accurately as possible.
The update effort (see section below.)
How outdated the faulting version is (how many versions have been released since?)
The commercial impact and risk of an upgrade.
Whether the cost of the combined effort between customer and Snow outweighs the effort/risk of an upgrade (esp. for longer running cases.)
Whether the product issue can be replicated in internal test environments.
Whether any workarounds are available that are equivalent to updating and fixing the root cause (e.g. there might be an alternative function which can be used instead, until the update is more feasible.)

What if an update required by Snow does not resolve the issue?

Despite being a frustrating experience, the upgrade was still valuable in that matching known issues have been eliminated as the root cause. This allows Snow Support to engage with software developers to request a new development effort to resolve the issue with a targetted fix. And of course, any issues other issues and security improvements also get introduced into your production environment at the same time, as an added benefit.

Examples

The examples in this section are based in part by this comparison of select Snow Software products based on effort and risk:

Example 1: issue related to the Snow Integration Manager

Current Version	5 minor versions behind
Effort / Risk of Update	Very low
Other Evidence:	No 100% matching problem record found, but the issue area is known to have been improved in recent releases

An update might be recommended very early on as the upgrade effort is low and outweighs the customer effort of continued troubleshooting.

Example 2: issue related to the Snow License Manager

Current Version	2 minor versions behind
Effort / Risk of Update	High
Other Evidence:	100% matching problem record found and this has been fixed in later release

An update will be recommended, once thorough troubleshooting steps has compared the issue behaviour and the problem record
The issue is highly likely to be fixed in the later version and whilst the update effort is high, there are no better viable alternatives.
The support engineer will also try to advise workarounds (not hotfixes!) or mitigation steps if possible, until the update can be completed.

Example 3: issue related to the Snow License Manager

Current Version	15 minor versions behind
Effort / Risk of Update	High
Other Evidence:	No 100% matching problem record found, though some similar ones have been identified

An update will be recommended once some troubleshooting steps have been carried out and, where possible, confirmed that the latest version is working in our environment.

Whilst there is no overwhelming evidence that the particular issue will be fixed in the customer’s environment, the likelihood of an upgrade fixing the issue is high.

Example 4: issue related to a Snow Inventory agent

Current Version	3 minor versions behind
Effort / Risk of Update	Low (for 1 machine)
Other Evidence:	No 100% matching problem record found, but a very similar one has been identified which is fixed in later version

An update will be recommend on one machine, for test purposes (before deciding how to proceed with other machines)

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