HPE SimpliVity upgrade for two node cluster

[CadenLange]

Hi

Interestingly I was talking to a SimpliVity user who needs to upgrade their two node SimpliVity cluster (Gen 10) from 4.0.1 to 4.2.0 along with the firmware and ESXi version.

Nothing wrong with that I thought, but they then added they don't have vSphere HA enabled on the cluster and aren't licensed for DRS.

The DRS situation isn't that uncommon, but the vSphere HA setting intrigued me - is this normal? What would happen in the event of losing a host and what's the inpact of using Upgrade Manager without HA enabled? I thought it would fail the pre-checks? Would they perhaps only be able to upgrade via CLI?

thanks

C

[gustenar · Accepted solution]

Hello @CadenLange 

vSphere HA is not required to be enabled when running the Upgrade Manager and it won't have any impact if it's disabled. What you must ensure is that all the VMs are HA compliant (SimpliVity HA, the primary and secondary replicas are available and updated). This is what the Upgrade Manager Guide states:

Check the HPE SimpliVity federation
Before you begin the upgrade process, check the following federation items:
• HPE OmniStack hosts reside in clusters.
• Ensure that the clusters are configured appropriately to allow for running guest migration from the hosts being upgraded.
For example, disable vSphere HA, or define vSphere HA admission control settings that will not interfere with guest
migration. For more details, refer to the HPE OmniStack for vSphere Administration Guide.
• Verify that the guest virtual machines in the clusters you want to upgrade show a status of "Yes" for Storage High Availability
(HA) compliance by checking the virutal machine view in vSphere Client.

HPE OmniStack 4.2.0 for vSphere Upgrade Guide 

Upgrade Manager will evacuate all VMs from the host when performing the upgrades. If DRS is not licensed then the user has to perform this operation manually.

Hope it helps.