Upgrade process flow

The upgrade procedure by using the installation toolkit is done in several phases. If you are doing a manual upgrade, you can use this process flow as a reference.

Important: Swift Object protocol is not supported from IBM Storage Scale 5.2.0 and later. If Swift Object is configured in the system, refer the 5.2.0 guide for the upgrade steps.

Upgrade phases

Upgrade precheck
Phase 1: Upgrade of all non-protocol nodes
Note: If the nodes that are being upgraded are protocol nodes, this phase is not applicable.
Phase 2: Upgrade of protocol nodes (except SMB and CES components)
Note: If the nodes that are being upgraded are non-protocol nodes, this phase is not applicable.
Phase 3: SMB upgrade, and CES upgrade on protocol nodes; License package upgrade on all nodes; and File audit logging message queue enabling at cluster level.
Note: If the nodes that are being upgraded are non-protocol nodes, SMB upgrade, and CES upgrade tasks of this phase are not applicable.
Phase 4: CES HDFS upgrade on DataNodes and NameNodes
Upgrade post-check

Upgrade precheck

Important: It is highly recommended to run the upgrade precheck while you are planning to upgrade, before the actual upgrade procedure. Doing this allows you adequate time to address any issues flagged during the upgrade precheck. The upgrade precheck can be done hours or days in advance and it does not have any impact on the cluster operations.

As part of the upgrade precheck, the following tasks are performed by the installation toolkit.

Determine the installed IBM Storage Scale packages across the cluster on all nodes.
Compare the versions of the installed packages with the versions in the repository of the packages that you want to upgrade to.
In a mixed operating system cluster, the comparison is done with the package repository applicable for the operating system running on the respective nodes.
Determine which packages need to be upgraded on each node.
For every package that needs to be upgraded or installed, dependency check is done to ensure that all dependencies are met. The upgrade procedure throws an error and exits, if any dependency is not met.
Check whether passwordless SSH is set up.
Check if supported OS is installed.
Check whether upgrade path is valid.

Phase 1

Check the cluster health.

Perform following steps on each non-protocol node, one node at a time.

Check the node health.

Unmount file systems and shut down GPFS.

Attention: At this point, I/O from this node stops.

Upgrade core GPFS.

Build a GPFS portability layer (GPL).

Upgrade file audit logging. Install if file audit logging is enabled in the cluster configuration but not installed.

Upgrade performance monitoring.

Upgrade GUI.

Start GPFS and mount the file systems.

Attention: At this point, I/O from this node resumes.

Check the node health.

These steps are repeated on the remaining non-protocol nodes, one node at a time. After all of the non-protocol nodes are upgraded, phase 1 is complete.

Phase 2

Perform following steps on each protocol node, one node at a time.

Check the node health.

Suspend CES on the node.

Attention: At this point, protocol I/O from this node stops.

Unmount file systems and shut down GPFS.

Attention: At this point, I/O from this node stops.

Upgrade core GPFS.

Build GPFS portability layer (GPL).

Upgrade file audit logging. Install if file audit logging is enabled in the cluster configuration but not installed.

Upgrade NFS.

Upgrade performance monitoring.

Upgrade GUI.

Start GPFS and mount the file systems.

Attention: At this point, I/O from this node resumes.

Resume CES on the node.

Attention: At this point, protocol I/O from this node resumes.

Check the node health.

These steps are repeated on the remaining protocol nodes, one node at a time. After all of the protocol nodes are upgraded, phase 2 is complete.

Phase 3

SMB upgrade, CES upgrade, License upgrade, FAL message queue enabling

Suspend CES on the first half of nodes.

Stop SMB on the 1st half of nodes.

Attention: At this point, SMB I/O on this half of nodes stops and CES IPs on these nodes are migrated to the nodes in the other half.

Upgrade SMB on the 1st half of nodes.

Suspend CES on the 2nd half of nodes.

Attention: At this point, SMB I/O stops on the whole cluster for a brief period.

Stop SMB on the 2nd half of nodes.

Start SMB on the 1st half of nodes.

Resume CES on the 1st half of nodes.

Attention: At this point, SMB I/O resumes on this half of nodes.

Upgrade SMB on the 2nd half of nodes.

Start SMB on the 2nd half of nodes.

Resume CES on the 2nd half of nodes.

Attention: At this point, SMB I/O resumes in the whole cluster.

Upgrade CES on all protocol nodes, one node at a time.

Upgrade license package on all nodes, one node at a time.

Enable file audit logging message queue on the cluster.

Check the cluster health.

After these steps are done, the installation toolkit automatically runs upgrade post-check.

Phase 4

In this phase, as part of the CES HDFS upgrade, the gpfs.hdfs-protocol package is upgraded on all DataNodes and NameNodes. For more information, see Upgrading CES HDFS Transparency in IBM Storage Scale: Big data and analytics support.

Upgrade post-check

As part of the upgrade post-check, the following tasks are performed by the installation toolkit.

Check the health of the nodes.
Compare the versions of the installed packages with the versions in the package repository.
In a mixed operating system cluster, the comparison is done with the package repository applicable for the operating system running on the respective nodes.
If any package is not upgraded, the installation toolkit prompts you to rerun the upgrade procedure.

You must complete the upgrade to the new code level to take advantage of the new functionality. For more information, see Completing the upgrade to a new level of IBM Storage Scale.