For technical questions/considerations please refer to this article. 

1. What type of upgrade functionality is in place; In-situ or Parallel?
   This is a parallel upgrade path meaning 2 sites, a temporary test upgrade site will be created, when ready to complete the upgrade the test upgrade site will become the live site, the current live site will be suspended, then shelved then deleted.
2. What rate plan needs to be selected when setting up the site that will be used for the upgrade?
   You need to select ‘Sage 200 Professional (SPC) Test upgrade licence’ from within the provisioning portal.
3. Does the upgrade site have a charge?
   No, this upgrade site does not carry a charge. Please note this should not be confused with Test & recovery sites which are chargeable, and their usage parameters are available in the knowledgebase.
4. Is there any guidance on when upgrades should be done?
   You’re free to do upgrades whenever you like, except when we notify you that there is a maintenance window – this is done via email and on status.sage.com.
   Where a site has a discount applied in anyway we would ask that you complete this at least three working days’ notice prior to the end of a month to allow our teams to ensure that the discount is carried over correctly.
5. How does the billing for the customer work when upgrading?
   When you choose upgrade on the test site, this will trigger it to shut the old live site down and what was the test upgrade site will take over. The old site will bill until the end of the current calendar month, the new site will bill from the 1st of the following month. Where the old site was annual, and you are upgrading before the anniversary you will see a pro-rata credit on your next invoice.
    NOTE: the new site when it takes over the billing will pick up the price plan available on that day, therefore customers who upgrade before their next anniversary where there has also been a price increase, the latest pricing will be selected. 
6. Can customers have more than one upgrade site?
   No, there is functionality in the provisioning portal to prevent more than one upgrade site running. You can have an upgrade site and test & recovery site if required.
7. How can you tell the difference between the live and the test upgrade site?
   The sites have different rate plans, the test upgrade site will have this plan: ‘Sage 200 Professional (SPC) Test upgrade licence’ The current live site will be either ‘Sage 200 Professional (SPC) Test Annual’, or ‘Sage 200 Professional (SPC) Test Monthly’. They will also have different internal names in the portal – its worthwhile setting these correctly (perhaps include the version number?).
8. How long do I have with both sites before needing to upgrade?
   There is no time limit to this process, however, with the extra resources created in Azure the customer will have costs associated with two virtual machines.
   The longer the period between creating the test upgrade site and the actual upgrade happening the more differences that may exist between the current live site and what will become the new live site post upgrade.

 TIP: Please check back regularly more questions may be added.