Updating the system software

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The system update process involves the updating of your entire system environment.

The update process

During the automatic update process, each node in a system is updated one at a time, and the new code is staged on the nodes. While each node restarts, some degradation in the maximum I/O rate can be sustained by the system. After all the nodes in the system are successfully restarted with the new code level, the new level is automatically committed. During commit, there can be a short impact on performance.

During an automatic code update, each node of a working pair is updated sequentially. The node that is being updated is temporarily not available and all I/O operations to that node fail. As a result, the I/O error counts increase and the failed I/O operations are directed to the partner node of the working pair. Applications do not see any I/O failures. When new nodes are added to the system, the update package is automatically downloaded to the new nodes from the system.

The following table shows the estimated time that is required to update a four node system. In this example, nodes A1 and A2 are in I/O group 1 and nodes B3 and B4 are in I/O group 2:
Table 1. Upgrade time for a four-node cluster
Steps Time (in minutes) Minimum time Maximum time
Get ready 1 minute 1 minute 1 minute
Upgrade node A2 9-24 minutes 10 minutes 25 minutes
Upgrade node B4 9-24 minutes 19 minutes 49 minutes
Wait for 10 minutes (for multi-pathing recovery) 10 minutes 29 minutes 59 minutes
Upgrade node A1 9-24 minutes 38 minutes 1 hour 23 minutes
Upgrade node B3 9-24 minutes 47 minutes 1 hour 47 minutes
Total - 47 minutes 1 hour 47 minutes
The update can normally be done concurrently with normal user I/O operations. However, performance might be impacted. If any restrictions apply to the operations that can be done during the update, these restrictions are documented on the product website that you use to download the packages. During the update procedure, most of the configuration commands are not available. Only the following commands are operational from the time that the update process starts to the time that the new code level is committed, or until the process is backed out:
  • svctask concurrentnodedump
  • svctask preplivedump
  • svctask triggerlivedump
  • svctask addnode or svctask addnode addnodecanister
  • svctask addcontrolenclosure
  • svctask rmnode or svctask rmnode rmnodecanister
  • svctask enablecli
  • svctask stopcluster
  • svctask applysoftware
  • svctask cpdumps
  • svctask swapnode
  • svctask testemail
  • svctask sendinventoryemail

All information commands.

To determine when your update process completes, you are notified through the management GUI. If you are using the command-line interface, use the lsupdate command to display the status of the update. If there is a problem with the update, the update enters a stalled state. Contact customer support immediately to diagnose the issue. Depending on the issue, with support help the update can be either aborted, backed off, or resumed.

Because of the operational limitations that occur during the update process, the code update is a user task. If there is a problem with the update, the update enters a stalled state. Contact customer support immediately to diagnose the issue. Depending on the issue, with support help the update can be either ended, backed off, or resumed. Do not try to troubleshoot update problems without technical assistance. For more information, see the topic about how to get information, help, and technical assistance.

Multipathing driver

Before you update, ensure that the multipathing driver is fully redundant with every path available and online. You might see errors that are related to the paths that are going away (fail over) and the error count increasing during the update. When the paths to the nodes are back, the nodes fall back to become a fully redundant system. After the 10-minute delay, the paths to the other node go down.

Metro Mirror and Global Mirror relationships

When you update software on a system that has primary or secondary volumes of running Metro Mirror or Global Mirror relationships, write performance might be degraded on the primary volumes, and Global Mirror relationships can be automatically stopped with one or more errors with error code 1920. You might want to proactively stop such relationships or consistency groups or the partnership before you update the software to avoid the write performance degradation, and restart the relationships after the update completes.

After the system update

The audit log content that was on your system before the update is sent to a file in the dumps/audit directory on the configuration node. The audit log will now contain content that occurs from commands that are run after a successful update of the system.