* It is '''highly''' desirable that your current ownCloud instance is at the latest release number before the next major version release. This is important as there may have been some important meta data fixes (or other fixes) that the new major release is dependent on. If you skip this step the upgrade for ownCloud may have some problems at a future time.
* Catalogue all applications active in the current ownCloud instance. Take special care to identify the "core" applications that were activated and third party Approved/Experimental applications that were installed. There is no guarantee that third party non-core applications will work on a new ownCloud release.
* Review and document all ownCloud sharing techniques used in the current ownCloud instance.
* Do backups of the ownCloud database, binaries and stored files.