AUTOMATED UPGRADE SYSTEM FOR A SERVICE-BASED DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER SYSTEM

The current document is directed to an automated upgrade subsystem within a distributed computer system that executes a distributed, service-based application comprising multiple local instances of the a distributed, service-based application, each instance including one or more control programs executing on a physical computer-system component of the distributed computer system. In one implementation, the automated upgrade subsystem provides a user interface that allows a system administrator or other user to launch a distributed-system-wide upgrade of a distributed application with a single input to a single input feature on a displayed user interface. The automated upgrade subsystem carries out a hierarchical, rolling upgrade, automatically generates snapshots for each physical computer system prior to launching local upgrade logic on the physical computer systems, detects upgrade problems and, in certain cases, automatically conducts a distributed-computer-system-wide rollback for problems that cannot be automatically or manually resolved.