Planning your system upgrade

 

Plan the upgrade

As with any systems upgrade, the upgrade process itself must be planned prior to the upgrade itself, the following steps ensure that the upgrade is a successful one.

The document below allows you to create a plan to estimate the upgrade time, assess  the impact on users of the system and any workflows which are used by said users, beyond this it allows you to gauge the upgrade risk.

 

Review upgrade/release documentation

The following documents should be reviewed to ensure a successful upgrade:

• This Document
• Release Notes for Target version and intermediate versions - Review these documents to ensure that  you understand which issues have been resolved and which known issues are still outstanding with the version of EditShare you are upgrading to 
• Compatibility guides - Ensure that your Hardware and Software is compatible with the version of EditShare which you are upgrading to

 

Verify the version upgrade path

Confirm that the version of EditShare that you are running is able to support the target version.

 

You can see your current version from the EditShare server’s desktop wallpaper.

 

Depending on the software release model, some versions of EditShare can only be upgraded from specific versions of EditShare. See associated version release notes for more detail.

 

Check system requirements

Confirm that your EditShare storage networks hardware is able to support the minimum requirements to upgrade. This is to confirm that the existing software version and hardware models are compatible with the upgrade version you intend to upgrade to.

 

Gauge upgrade impact

An important part of the upgrade process is to determine the impact of both the upgrade process itself, but also the impact of the target version being upgraded to.

 

For example during the storage upgrade process, individual nodes which are not currently in the upgrade process will continue to serve storage clients, however that can depend upon the storage protocol in use, client’s may disconnect and reconnect subject to node availability.

 

Assessment should be made with regard to the impact upon the storage itself, its users, and the workflows conducted upon this storage cluster.

 

Further to this, review the new features, changed features, and known limitations documentation with respect to the target version of the upgrade. Confirm that you are not negatively affected by the changes, where there are differences in operation which require changes to users and/or workflow under the new version, then consideration as to whether you should wait to upgrade should be considered. Alternatively workflow changes or mitigations should be put into place.

 

EditShare Support staff should be engaged where appropriate.

 

Plan upgrade schedule

The upgrade schedule should include appropriate time to address any issues found by the pre upgrade actions detailed below to reduce the likelihood of a problematic upgrade, such as hardware replacement.

 

Further the upgrade schedule should include:

• Estimated times to upgrade the system itself
• Notification to users and stakeholders of the scheduled upgrade slot
• Notification to users and stakeholder of the expected impact of the upgrade (possible disconnections, changes to workflow)

 

Where possible the upgrade should be scheduled at an off hours timeslot

 

Consideration should further be given to extending the upgrade schedule to account for troubleshooting and other post upgrade tasks such where workflow may change for example.

In addition there should be time allocated to update client software where appropriate such as EditShare Connect and FLOW's installable clients.

 

 

Complete Pre-Upgrade Actions

The following pre-upgrade checks are to ensure that the system in question is ready to be upgraded to the target version. Skipping any of these steps could lead to delayed or problematic upgrade deployments

 

Collect installation information

It is recommended that installation information be gathered prior to any upgrade procedure. The purpose of which is to confirm the installation's current configuration and also provide accurate information to installation engineers and/or EditShare personnel.

Such information should include:

• Hardware and software information of the cluster itself
• Protection levels employed on data (XOR, integer goals)
  Pertinent networking information
• Client workstation operating systems and versions
• Client workflows

 

Collect installation status

Prior to upgrade cluster installation status information should be collected from the EditShare EFS cluster, this can be achieved from the systems Control Panel

 

Gather Diagnostics

Prior to upgrade diagnostics should be gathered and reviewed to determine that there are not existing issues which may hinder successful completion of the upgrade process. Diagnostics can be gathered from the systems Control Panel

 

Check Hardware Health

A check of the hardware components should be conducted prior to the upgrade of the equipment.

Including but not limited to:

• Hardware RAID health
• OS drive health
• Fan and Power via IPMI
• Confirm that Fencing appliances (IPMI and PDU) are operational and contactable
  
  Any issues found must be addressed prior to upgrade.

Check Free space

A minimum level of free space should be available for each component server which is being upgraded.

The free space requirements apply to the root partition “/” and the log partition “/var/log” and should be a minimum of 10% free.

You can confirm the free space from either the previously gathered diagnostics, in the outputs/df-T-h.txt file.

 

Resolve any outstanding issues

If any of the previous checks reveal issues these must be addressed before continuing, whether that be reducing filesystem usage or replacing faulty hardware

 

Backup configuration data

Where there is custom configuration employed at your installation, this should be backed up.

Examples include customer provided SSL certificates or customer FLOW Automation Script Runner scripts

 

Ensure Backups are up to date and complete

You should confirm that your current backup strategy is up to date and operational.

Any Disaster Recovery plan should also be reviewed at this time.

 

Verify update media

If you are installing the update via an offline updater, confirm that the offline updater file verifies against the publicly published md5 or sha1 checksums. You can confirm this on the EditShare with the commands:
$ sha1sum /path/to/updater-file 

$ md5sum /path/to/updater-file 

 

Perform EFS upgrade

At this point, the system is ready for upgrade.

Upgrade action advice can be found in the EditShare Administrator guide and supporting documentation. The specifics of which will be different for each deployment.

 

Post Upgrade Actions

Verify operational status

• Verify that all nodes are running the correct EditShare OS version as specified in the upgrade plan and reported on the EditShare desktop
• Verify the High Availability Status page is all green
• Verify the RAID health
• Verify Active Directory connectivity
• Verify all services have started as expected

Restore client connections and verify workflow

After the upgrade restore any connections which were disconnected from the cluster and run through the workflow to confirm functionality.

If any custom settings were backed up prior to upgrade, check and restore these if required