Preparing for upgrade
This section describes the precautions you must take, the tasks you must perform when preparing to upgrade your system, and the procedure to download the upgrade files.
Before you begin
Back up before upgrading
The upgrade to BMC Discovery 23.3 is fully tested and supported, though is more significant than previous upgrades. The upgrade is complex, and involves a change of two major versions: from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 to Oracle Linux 9. During the upgrade, the BMC Discovery product is uninstalled and then reinstalled, if for any reason, the upgrade fails at that time, the BMC Discovery product cannot resolve any upgrade issues.
Before you upgrade, you should back up the appliance, or for clusters, each cluster member. Use the SSH or Windows Share backup method.
If you are using a virtual appliance, you should shutdown and take a snapshot of the virtual machine. For a cluster of virtual appliances, you should shutdown all the virtual machines at the same time and snapshot them at the same time. For example, if you are using VMware, use the vSphere Client to shutdown the virtual machines and take the snapshot.
Before you upgrade, make sure that:
- You create a backup of the appliance or cluster.
- You have at least 16 GB free disk space in
/usr/tideway. - You do not have any unused disks attached. An unused disk is, for example, one with no partitions defined, or one or more partitions defined and not mounted. Detach any unused disk before upgrading.
- Oracle Linux 9 no longer supports x86-64-v1 CPUs, you cannot upgrade to BMC Discovery 23.3 on a system using x86-64-v1 CPUs.
- If NetworkManager support is disabled in your Network configuration (
NM_CONTROLLED=NO), the upgrade will remove the flag to allow the NetworkManager service to upgrade the interface. - You must have upgraded the OS to at least the June 2023 update.
Warning
There was a compatibility problem with an earlier version of the BMC Discovery 23.3 upgrade archive, and OSUs released for November 2023 and later. Dummy RPMs were installed as part of the November OSU to prevent installation of the problematic upgrade package.
The current upgrade package is: Discovery_OS_Upgrade_CentOSRHEL7_OL9_v006.nnnnnn.tgz. On EPD, the upgrade package is labelled BMC Discovery conversion CentOS/RHEL to OL9.
- If you have an October 2023 or earlier OSU installed, you can install the BMC Discovery 23.3 upgrade archive.
If you have installed the November OSU, (6 November 2023 on CentOS 7 or 6 November 2023 on RHEL 7), you must check that you are installing the
_v006version of the package. When installing the_v006version of the package you must also remove the dummy RPM installed as part of the November OSU. To check for the presence, and to remove the dummy RPM, enter the following commands:[tideway@appliance01 ~]$ rpm -q ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch [tideway@appliance01 ~]$ sudo rpm -ev ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch Preparing packages... ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch [tideway@appliance01 ~]$ rpm -q ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch package ERROR-Please-See-Release-Notes-1-1.noarch is not installed [tideway@appliance01 ~]$
You must not remove the dummy package and attempt to install the _v004 version of the upgrade package. Doing so will result in an unrecoverable BMC Discovery system.
- If you have made changes to OS configuration files on the appliance, you must verify and reapply the changes as required after the upgrade. The changes that you made might have been overwritten by the upgrade process.
- Unexpected modifications to
/etc/fstabmay cause the upgrade to fail. - If you have installed any additional software, by using an RPM, tar archive, or similar, you must uninstall the software before upgrading.
- You are a user with admin security privileges, such as the system user.
Upgrading systems that use DHCP
If you use DHCP, during the upgrade process the DHCP client can send a request that has the client identifier value set. The client identifier is not set in DHCP requests that are made before or after the upgrade. Depending on the behavior of your DHCP server, this could mean that the appliance is assigned a new IP address during the upgrade process. It is possible this could happen even if you are using reserved addresses for your appliance. We recommend trying the upgrade on a test system to see whether this affects you.
We recommend using static addresses where possible. If this is not possible and you are affected by the address change, there might be an option in the DHCP server to ignore the client identifier, and assign an address based on the MAC which remain the same throughout the upgrade.
Upgrade archive naming conventions
The upgrade archive files are available from the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) site. To help you locate the files easily, the Product Name column lists the label name of the product. For example, BMC Discovery. Click the + sign next to it to expand and view the available downloads. Locate your required product and version, such as BMC Discovery 23.3. When you click the product label name, the relevant upgrade archive file is ready for download. Select Save File and then click OK.
Upgrades from versions earlier than 23.3
The product upgrade archive file uses a .tgz file extension, while the compressed OS upgrade archive uses the .sh.gz file extension. The downloadable file uses the following file naming convention:
- For product upgrades, depending on the OS of the appliance you are upgrading, one of the following:
ADDM_Upgrade_vv.v.vv_nnnnnn_CentOS7.tgz- on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 23.3.00 from CentOS 7 Upgrade.ADDM_Upgrade_vv.v.vv_nnnnnn_RHEL7.tgz- on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery for Data Center Redhat Edition Version 23.3.00 from RHEL7 Upgrade.
Wherevv.v.vvis the BMC Discovery version number to which you are upgrading to andnnnnnnis the build number.
- And:
Discovery_OS_Upgrade_CentOSRHEL7_OL9_v006.nnnnnn.tgz- on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery conversion CentOS/RHEL to OL9.
- You must also download a TKU to install with the upgrade:
Technology-Knowledge-Update-2023-08-2-Discovery-23.3.00+.zip- on EPD, at the time of release, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 23.3.00 Technology Knowledge Update (TKU) 2023-08-2, though the filename and label will change as later TKUs are released.
Upgrades to 23.3 patches from 23.3
The product upgrade archive file uses a .tgz file extension, while the compressed OS upgrade archive uses the .sh.gz file extension. The downloadable file uses the following file naming convention:
Discovery_Upgrade_23.3.0.1_nnnnnn_OL9.tgz- on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 23.3.00 OL9 Upgrade.- Where
vv.v.vvis the BMC Discovery version number to which you are upgrading to andnnnnnnis the build number.
- Where
To download the upgrade files
- From the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) site, download the compressed upgrade archive.
You must follow specific file naming conventions for the compressed archive files. For more information, see upgrade archive naming conventions. Upload the upgrade archive to the
/usr/tideway/var/upgradedirectory on the standalone machine or any machine in the cluster. You can upload the archive by using the upgrade UI.
Upgrade considerations
When you run the upgrade, the timezone you specified is overwritten and reset to Europe/London unless you have updated the timezone. For information about how to configure the timezone, see Localizing the appliance.
- Where an upgrade makes changes to syncmapping files (see Default CDM Mapping and Syncmapping block), the initial CMDB syncs after upgrade might result in longer reconciliation times. Examples of such changes are key changes or attribute changes on a CMDB CI.
Approach to upgrading consolidating systems
If you are upgrading a scanning appliance you may have to also upgrade the consolidation appliance. Version 20.02 (12.0), 20.08 (12.1), 21.05 (12.2), 21.05 (12.2), 21.3 (12.3), 22.1 (12.4), 22.2 (12.5), 23.1 (12.6), or 23.3 (13.0) scanning appliances can consolidate to version 23.3 consolidating appliances. However, version 23.3 scanners cannot consolidate to earlier consolidating appliances. Once you have upgraded your consolidating appliances, you can then upgrade scanning appliances as required. You must upgrade all your appliances eventually.
When a system uses consolidation, we recommend the following approach in upgrading BMC Discovery:
- Stop discovery on scanning appliances.
- Ensure that all consolidation operations are complete.
- Stop discovery on consolidating appliances.
- Upgrade consolidating appliances.
- Restart discovery on the consolidating appliances.
- Restart discovery on the scanning appliances.
- Upgrade scanning appliances as required.
Comments
RE: "Before you upgrade, you should back up the appliance, or for clusters, each appliance." In my opinion, this should read like this: Before you upgrade, you should back up the appliance, or for clusters, each cluster member. It is highly recommended that clusters be backed up using the SSH or Windows Share backup method so that there is a single backup directory that contains the backup for each cluster member. (Otherwise, you may get errors trying to restore the separate member backups without help from Customer Support).
Hi,
Thanks for the comment. We made the change recommending SSH or Windows share some time ago, and failed to respond to your comment. We do appreciate the comment though.
Thanks, Duncan.
Log in or register to comment.