Upgrading to PowerVC for Private Cloud 2.3.3

Before you begin

PowerVC 2.3.3 supports the Private Cloud Edition only. PowerVC 2.3.3 supports NovaLink 2.3.3 only. Before you upgrade to PowerVC 2.3.3, it is recommended to upgrade to the latest NovaLink version.

For more information about upgrading PowerVM NovaLink to 2.3.3, see the following links:

PowerVC provides you three methods of upgrading, through backup and restore, offline upgrade, and rolling upgrade.

Backup and restore: In the backup and restore method, you can choose to upgrade PowerVC on the same system where you have an earlier version that is installed or on a different system. For details, see Backing up.
Offline upgrade: For "offline upgrade", you can upgrade all nodes simultaneously in a multinode environment even when services are offline. For details, see PowerVC offline upgrade.
Rolling upgrade: If you are upgrading through the "rolling method", you can upgrade PowerVC only on the same system. For details, see PowerVC rolling upgrade.

Note: You must run the powervc-health-check update command before you perform the upgrade operation. For more information about the health check commands, see the powervc-health-check command in the CLI commands page.

You can directly upgrade to PowerVC for Private Cloud 2.3.3 by using any of the following options:

Table 1. Options to upgrade to PowerVC for Private Cloud 2.3.3
Operating system (OS)	Previous OS versions	Previous PowerVC versions	Upgrade OS versions	PowerVC upgrade options
RHEL	8.x and 9.x	PowerVC 2.3.1 or 2.3.2	8.x and 9.x	Backup and restore. See Backing up. Rolling upgrade. See PowerVC rolling upgrade. Offline upgrade. See PowerVC offline upgrade.

Notes:

Before you install or upgrade, make sure that the priority number of the PowerVC repository is higher than the RHEL OS repository. The repositories that PowerVC creates have 90 as the priority in which 1 is the highest and 99 is the lowest.
After you upgrade to PowerVC 2.3.3, it is recommended that you visit Fix Central to download and install any fix packs that are available. For more information, see the Getting fixes from Fix Central topic.
To maintain PowerVC cluster consistency, restart controller node one at a time. Make sure that you allow 30 minutes before you restart the next node.
If you want to move to the latest supported RHEL version, make sure to successfully upgrade to PowerVC for Private Cloud 2.3.3 first.
Starting from PowerVC 2.3.3, Compute Plane Nodes (CPN) are deprecated and no longer supported. If hosts are currently managed by a CPN, they must be migrated to the Controller Node (CN) to maintain a supported environment.

Run the /opt/ibm/powervc/bin/powervc-manage -o migratehmchost -hh <hmchostname> command to migrate each host.

After migrating, verify if the host is in Operating state under the Controller Node. Ensure to remove and decommission the CPN after all hosts are migrated.

Upgrade considerations

Consider the following before you start with or upgrade procedure.

Make sure that the managed hosts are on IBM POWER8 or later.
Review the hardware and software requirements.
For RHEL, PowerVC 2.3.3 installation is supported on both single node and multinode environments.
Before you perform any operation, make sure that the virtual machine hostname is the same as the hostname that you used to create the inventory.
Before you upgrade to PowerVC version 2.3.3, migrate any hosts that runs on Compute plane node to PowerVC controller by using the /opt/ibm/powervc/bin/powervc-manage -o migratehmchost --hmchostname <MTMS HOST> command. After upgrade process is complete, you can migrate the hosts back to Compute plane node by using the same command.
Do not perform resource registration operations while the PowerVC upgrade is in progress.
Support for IBM XIV® Storage System and EMC VNX is withdrawn.
It is recommended to update the operating system distribution before you upgrade to PowerVC 2.3.3. If the operating system distribution is not updated before the update process, then it is mandatory to update the OpenSSH server to the latest version.
Note: If the OpenSSH server is not updated to the latest version, it might lead to issues during the upgrade process.
Before you proceed with PowerVC upgrade, perform the following steps to update the OpenSSH server to the latest version:
1. Run the following command:
```
yum update openssh-server
```
2. Restart the SSHD service.
If multiple backup nodes are registered in PowerVC, after the upgrade operation all the backup nodes must be updated. If you update only one backup node, it might prevent the updated backup node to work properly due to remote procedure call (RPC) version mismatches.

Note: Make sure that all the users present in the backup environment are present on the restored environment as well. Also, the inventory user of the backup must be the same as the inventory user of the restore. For example, if in the backup environment the inventory user is root then in the restore environment the inventory user must also be root.

Taking backup of PowerVC

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Note: You must run the powervc-health-check backup command before you perform the backup operation. For more information about the health check commands, see the powervc-health-check command in the CLI commands page.

For PowerVC 2.3.3 or later versions, complete these steps. This procedure is supported only for HA or clustered environment.

Ensure that the user has sufficient sudo privileges that are configured to perform execution of this command and read access to the files.
Run the powervc-opsmgr backup command with any needed options. Perform Novalink upgrade to the latest version.
Note: Backup of PowerVC 2.2.x can be restored on PowerVC version 2.3.3 running on RHEL operating system.

When the backup operation completes, a new file powervc_backup.tar.gz is placed in a new time stamp subdirectory of the target directory. For example, a potential file path is /var/opt/ibm/powervc/backups/<timestamp>/powervc_backup.tar.gz. You can then leave the archive there or move or copy it to another directory as needed.

Note: If an error occurs while the powervc-opsmgr backup command is running, check for errors in the powervc-opsmgr backup logs in /opt/ibm/powervc/log.

You can also refer to Backing up for more information on backup procedure.

Restoring to PowerVC version 2.3.3

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Note: You must run the powervc-health-check restore command before you perform the restore operation. For more information about the health check commands, see the powervc-health-check command in the CLI commands page.

Review operating system requirements at hardware and software requirements. If restore fails due to network disconnection or any other reason, remove the powervc.lock file available in the /powervcdata/opsmgr/ folder and run the command again.

If PowerVC version 2.3.3 is using the local OS registry (and not the LDAP server) as the backend for authentication, then ensure all local OS users that exists (for authentication) on the PowerVC version 2.3.1 or 2.3.2 system are also created on the PowerVC version 2.3.3 system before restore is performed. This action prevents any user login issues after restore.

In PowerVC, two options are available to upgrade in a clustered or HA environment.

PowerVC restore on a single node. You can move to three node cluster by using powervc-opsmgr addnodes command.
PowerVC restore on single node and multinode (three nodes). To restore on single node or multinode, run powervc-opsmgr restore command. Later, you can add two more nodes that makes it a five node cluster by running the powervc-opsmgr addnodes command.
Note: When you restore in a multinode environment, make sure that you perform restore on the primary node.

To restore the backup from PowerVC version 2.3.1 or 2.3.2 to PowerVC 2.3.3 perform the following steps:

Note: Before you start with the restore steps, ensure that the target system is properly prepared and all services of PowerVC are in running state.

Procedure

Copy the backup file to the system where PowerVC version 2.3.3 is installed. If you are upgrading PowerVC on a different system, proceed with this step.
Run # powervc-opsmgr restore to restore PowerVC from backup. This restore command looks for backup archive at /var/opt/powervc/backups directory by default.
Example:
```
# powervc-opsmgr restore -c <clustername> -b <backup archive file path>
```
Additional PowerVC nodes can be added to the cluster to make it a multinode environment. For details, see PowerVC Operations Manager.
Notes:
- After a successful restore, if another restore is triggered on the same system make sure /var/opt/ibm/powervc/backups/<powervc_release>/ is removed or moved to a different location to avoid conflicts.
- When restore operation is performed on a fresh system, the PowerVC services that runs on the NovaLink host are upgraded to the latest version.

Update PowerVC on the NovaLink host

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After PowerVC restore or upgrade is completed on version 2.3.3, perform the following steps to update PowerVC packages on NovaLink:

Move NovaLink hosts into maintenance mode from PowerVC 2.3.3 GUI.
Update the NovaLink version to 2.3.3 for both RHEL8 and RHEL9.
Exit hosts from the maintenance mode.
Make sure that the backup archive is copied across all the nodes under the default location with 644 permission. The default location is /var/opt/ibm/powervc/backups.
Login to PowerVC 2.3.3 GUI and update the NovaLink. You can use one of the following methods to update Nova Link:
- On the Overview page, click Update NovaLink in the notification to finish updating NovaLink.
- Navigate to the Hosts page and click Update NovaLink.