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Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

 
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Dave Hamblin
Advisor

San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Our existing LHSan cluster is at SanIQ7. Its a 3.4 TB unit that has about 300 GB open.

Our new units (seperate cluster and managment group) are SanIQ8.1. They came in as 8.0, I upgraded to 8.1 which went fine and very fast, but they also have no volumes or data defined yet.

My question is upgrading the two 7.0 to 8.1. Can anyone tell me if this also is a fairly quick process and if there is any gotcha's or the like? I wasn't sure if the amount of data on the units plays any role in upgrade time or difficulty?
10 REPLIES 10
teledata
Respected Contributor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Are you migrating the data off to your new cluster, or do you intend to do an "in place" upgrade?
http://www.tdonline.com
Dave Hamblin
Advisor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

The new san is for new data/servers.

The existing data will remain on the existing LHSan, so it would be an inplace upgrade.

We were going to upgrade the existing units so they were current, or is this one of those "let sleeping dogs lay" (ie we should leave them alone).
Mark...
Honored Contributor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Hi,
As far as I know it is painless and can be done online. You should always read any release notes first which should advise you of any gotchas!
However, I believe when you do the upgrade it is recommended to only do one node at a time and make sure that you do the node that is serving out the VIP LAST.
Mark...
if you have nothing useful to say, say nothing...
Gauche
Trusted Contributor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Doing one node at a time and doing the vip last is something the upgrade process automates.

The tip to read the release notes is a good idea as their might be a patch that is suggested for you to install before the upgrade.

The size of data in the SAN does not impact how long it takes to apply the upgrade at all.

The number of nodes, and how much data you write to the SAN during the upgrade, both affect how long it takes.
Number of nodes matters because it does one node at a time.
How much you write to the SAN matters because the upgrades will wait for all volumes to re-syncronize between node reboots, and if you write 1GB of data while a node is rebooting, you'll have to wait longer for the 1GB to re-sychronize before the next node can start installing.

The less load the system is under during the upgrade the faster it will go.
Adam C, LeftHand Product Manger
Dave Hamblin
Advisor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Thanks all! I will go through the release notes to make sure I am ready for the upgrade.

Bryan McMullan
Trusted Contributor
Solution

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

I just upgraded our 50 nodes from 7.0 SP1 to 8.1. It went pretty smooth. The path to follow is:

1. Install Updated CMC.
2. If applicable, upgrade the DSM's for MPIO. This is a pain as it requires the old one to be uninstalled and is multiple reboots (if you are going from 7 to 8, not bad if from 8 to 8.1).
3. Upgrade all Remote Clusters (normal -> managers -> VIPs).
4. Upgrade normal nodes (non manager/non VIP).
5. Upgrade managers
6. Upgrade VIP.

NSM160's took about 18 minutes per upgrade. x3650's took about 6 minutes per upgrade. DL320/P4000's took about 6 minutes per upgrade. This is with about 30TB of data during production hours.

We did take all our connected servers offline for the manager/VIP updates as the systems wait 15 seconds I think before they hand off if you down the VIP (causing iSCSIprt errors on Windows and lockups on ESX). As we are very data intensive, I find it safer to go this route.

Good luck!
Dave Hamblin
Advisor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Thanks! Very helpful.
Dave Hamblin
Advisor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Hmm, I don't see the release notes on the HP site where I downloaded the 8.1 upgrade; anyone know where they are in the HP site?
Dave Hamblin
Advisor

Re: San IQ 7 to San IQ 8.1 Upgrade Questions

Never mind, I found them, I am closing this thread as resolved.