How to smoothly upgrade from an earlier version of GTM to GTM 3.0?_Global Traffic Manager 3.0 - Alibaba Cloud DNS

Global Traffic Manager 3.0 (GTM 3.0) is now online. Compared to the previous version, GTM 3.0 offers improvements in configuration, scheduling, disaster recovery, and operations. For more information, see Global Traffic Manager 3.0 upgrade instructions. If you are currently using a Global Traffic Manager instance (including previous version instances), you can follow the methods in this topic to smoothly upgrade to Global Traffic Manager 3.0.

Note

The upgrade from earlier versions of Global Traffic Manager to Global Traffic Manager 3.0 is scheduled to begin on December 30, 2025. Because this service involves core business domain names, the upgrade will be rolled out in batches to ensure a smooth transition. The entire process may take some time. To ensure you have sufficient time to prepare, the system will notify target users through text messages, emails, and internal messages one month, seven days, three days, and one day before the upgrade. The platform upgrade process does not affect the normal operation of your current DNS service. If you prefer to switch versions proactively and with more flexibility, you can also manually migrate to the new version by following the instructions in this topic.

Global Traffic Manager (earlier versions) refers to versions released before Global Traffic Manager 3.0.
If your instance of an earlier Global Traffic Manager version is configured with a latency-based access policy, it is not included in this upgrade.

Methods

Flow

Purchase a GTM 3.0 instance. For more information, see Purchase an instance.
Refer to the access policy configured in your current GTM version and configure the same scheduling policy in GTM 3.0. For common failover scenarios, see:
How to implement primary/secondary disaster recovery with GTM.
How to implement multi-active load balancing and disaster recovery with GTM.
How to implement ISP-based parsing and failover with GTM.
How to implement geo-intelligent parsing with GTM.
How to implement dual-stack parsing and disaster recovery with GTM.
Test and verify the access domain of the configured GTM 3.0 to ensure that the parsing results are consistent with the current GTM version.
Modify the CNAME record of your business domain to point to the GTM 3.0 access domain on the authoritative DNS where the domain is located.
Unsubscribe from the previous GTM instance.

Examples

Assume your business domain is ceshi.cloud-example.com and you are currently using the previous version of Global Traffic Manager.

Scenario 1: The business domain and GTM access domain are different

Note

In this scenario, you have already set up a CNAME record on the authoritative DNS to point your business domain to the GTM access domain.

Assume that in the Basic Configuration page of the previous Global Traffic Manager, the GTM CNAME access domain is set to the default configuration: gtm-cn-btz4**01.cloud-example.com.
Currently, you have already set up a CNAME record on the authoritative DNS to point your business domain ceshi.cloud-example.com to the GTM access domain.
Purchase a GTM 3.0 instance and configure the same access policy as your current GTM version. You can use the default domain name for the GTM 3.0 access domain configuration.
Important
If your previous GTM access domain is a System-assigned Access Domain and you do not currently have any domain hosted on Alibaba Cloud DNS, you will not be able to generate a GTM access domain after upgrading to GTM 3.0. The following two solutions are recommended:
- Migrate your domain resolution records to Alibaba Cloud DNS. For more information, see How to smoothly migrate domain resolution to Alibaba Cloud DNS.
- Host a subdomain on Alibaba Cloud DNS. For more information, see Scenario 1: Primary domain uses third-party DNS, subdomain uses Alibaba Cloud DNS.
Test the newly configured GTM 3.0 access domain to verify that the returned parsing results are consistent with those returned by the previous GTM version.
Important
In this scenario, you can verify the configured GTM 3.0 access policy to ensure that the parsing results are consistent before and after the upgrade.
Modify the CNAME record value of your business domain to point to the GTM 3.0 access domain on the authoritative DNS.

Scenario 2: The business domain and GTM access domain are the same

Note

In this scenario, you have actively modified the GTM access domain to be the same as your business domain. Therefore, there is no need to set up a CNAME record on the authoritative DNS to point your business domain to the GTM access domain.

You have configured the GTM CNAME access domain on the Basic Configuration page of the previous Global Traffic Manager as: ceshi.cloud-example.com.
Purchase a GTM 3.0 instance and configure the same access policy as your current version. Make sure that the GTM 3.0 access domain is the same as your business domain ceshi.cloud-example.com.
Warning
Make sure to complete the configuration of all load scheduling policies before enabling the instance. Otherwise, once the instance is enabled, the current access domain will immediately take effect and overwrite the scheduling policies configured by the previous GTM version.
Confirm that the access policy configured in GTM 3.0 is completely consistent with the previous version, and then Enable the access domain instance.
Important
In this scenario, once the access domain is enabled, the business domain will be scheduled according to the configured access policy. Please ensure that the access policy is consistent with the one configured in the previous version.