Upgrading a version 9.4 HA configuration with DR

You can upgrade your high availability (HA) configuration to a new firmware version while maintaining the availability of your HA queue managers. You upgrade the disaster recovery (DR) node first.

Before you begin

Before upgrading, you should back up your queue managers as described in Backing up a queue manager. You should also ensure that none of your queue managers are in the partitioned state, resolving the state before upgrade if necessary.

About this task

You must use the command line interface to upgrade your DR node and upgrade your HA queue managers.

First you upgrade your DR node. This is to ensure that queue manager data does not run on an upgraded appliance, unable to fail over in the event of a disaster to an appliance that has not yet been upgraded. Then you upgrade the HA pair. You suspend one appliance so that any queue managers running there fail over to the other appliance in your HA pair. You then upgrade the firmware on the first appliance and restart it. Finally you upgrade the second HA appliance.

Procedure

To upgrade the DR node:
1. Ensure that all the queue manager instances on the DR node have the DR secondary role, while the equivalent queue manager instances in the HA group have the DR primary role.
2. Upgrade your appliance to the new firmware level:
```
boot image accept-license firmware_file
```
  Where firmware_file is the file that contains the appliance firmware upgrade (see Overview of installing a new level of firmware by using the command line for details on obtaining the file).
3. The appliance restarts. Ensure the queue managers on the DR node retain the DR secondary role (that is, they should not run).
To upgrade the first appliance in your HA group:
1. Suspend the appliance from the HA group:
```
sethagrp -s
```
  Queue managers fail over to the other appliance.
2. Upgrade your appliance to the new firmware level:
```
boot image accept-license firmware_file
```
  Where firmware_file is the file that contains the appliance firmware upgrade (see Overview of installing a new level of firmware by using the command line for details on obtaining the file).
  The appliance restarts.
3. Resume the appliance:
```
sethagrp -r
```
  Each queue manager now switches over to this appliance. The other appliance in the HA group must be available, or the command fails. After the queue managers have switched over, they have the ended status on the second appliance and cannot fail back to the second appliance until that too is upgraded.
To upgrade the second appliance in your HA group:
1. Suspend the appliance from the HA group:
```
sethagrp -s
```
2. Upgrade the appliance to the new firmware level:
```
boot image accept-license firmware_file
```
  Where firmware_file is the file that contains the appliance firmware upgrade (see Overview of installing a new level of firmware by using the command line for details on obtaining the file).
  The appliance restarts.
3. Resume the appliance:
```
sethagrp -r
```