Before beginning an upgrade, which action does Epic recommend taking with the environments?

• A. Sever the link between MST and REF environment but linking one ACE environment directly to MST
• B. Refresh
• C. Rebuild
• D. Upgrade

Answer: (A)

Preparing for an upgrade means creating a clean, isolated path for testing and validation. The recommended approach is to sever the link between the MST (master) and REF (reference) environments, and instead connect one ACE environment directly to MST. This setup keeps the stable REF baseline untouched by upgrade activity, so you have a pristine reference for comparison and rollback if needed. It also gives a dedicated ACE test bed that mirrors production behavior without feeding upgrade changes back into REF, making it easier to identify and fix issues before any promotion. In short, this isolation minimizes risk by preventing upgrade changes from propagating across environments and provides a controlled, observable upgrade path. Refreshing or rebuilding doesn’t establish this controlled separation, and upgrading without it increases the chance of unintended impacts across environments.