Upgrading

This section describes the upgrade and migration options that are available from previous versions of BMC Discovery.

No architecture changes required

Note

When upgrading from BMC Discovery 11.3.x or 20.02 (12.0) to 20.08, there is no need to change your deployment architecture. Rather, we strongly recommend that you upgrade using your existing architecture and test version 20.08 in a known configuration. After you have tested BMC Discovery 20.08 in a known configuration, you might choose to explore the deployment opportunities offered by the BMC Discovery Outpost.

Existing Windows proxies will continue to operate with upgraded appliances.

Related topic

Release notes and notices

Planning

Troubleshooting

BMC Community: FAQ on BMC Discovery upgrade

Upgrade and migration overview

To summarize the upgrade paths and outcomes:

New installations of BMC Discovery 11.3 use CentOS 7 as their operating system.
Any appliance upgraded to 11.3 runs on CentOS 6. BMC Discovery 11.3.x was the last version of BMC Discovery to support CentOS 6.
You cannot upgrade a CentOS 6 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 based appliance to CentOS 7; you must migrate. Migration involves backing up the CentOS 6 or RHEL 6 based appliance (version 10.1.x to 11.3.x) and restoring to a new BMC Discovery 20.08 appliance running on CentOS 7.
BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 is also available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. You cannot upgrade a CentOS 7 based appliance to RHEL 7; you must migrate. Migration involves backing up the CentOS 7 based appliance and restoring to a new 20.02 (12.0) appliance running on RHEL 7.

This diagram show the upgrade paths available. You can also migrate using backup/restore. Using the backup/restore migration method, you can move your data to a new BMC Discovery using any of the supported operating systems shown.

You can also migrate between versions of BMC Discovery running on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7, but for clarity, it is not shown in the diagram.

Supported upgrade versions

You can upgrade to BMC Discovery 20.08 patch 4 running on CentOS 7 from the following versions of BMC Discovery running on CentOS 7:

11.3.0.0, 11.3.0.1, 11.3.0.2, 11.3.0.3, 11.3.0.4, 11.3.0.5, and 11.3.0.6.
20.02 (12.0) patch 1, 20.02 (12.0) patch 2, 20.02 (12.0) patch 3, 20.02 (12.0) patch 4, 20.02 (12.0) patch 5, and 20.02 (12.0) patch 6
20.08 (12.1), 20.08 (12.1) patch 1, and 20.08 (12.1) patch 2, and 20.08 (12.1) patch 3

You can upgrade to BMC Discovery 20.08 patch 4 running on RHEL 7 from the following version of BMC Discovery running on RHEL 7:

20.02 (12.0) patch 2, 20.02 (12.0) patch 3, 20.02 (12.0) patch 4, 20.02 (12.0) patch 5, and 20.02 (12.0) patch 6
20.08 (12.1), 20.08 (12.1) patch 1, 20.08 (12.1) patch 2, and 20.08 (12.1) patch 3

Upgrading mixed clusters

Clusters can comprise a mix of members running on CentOS 6 and CentOS 7. You might get into this situation by upgrading a cluster to BMC Discovery 11.3 (all members would be running 11.3 on CentOS 6) and then adding a new member that is a new installation of 11.3 running on CentOS 7. You must migrate individual members running on CentOS 6 (using backup/restore) to version 20.08.

OS migration

The replacement of earlier OS versions with CentOS 7 ensures continued support for the appliance OS during its lifetime, and provides support for newer hardware where you choose to install on hardware. It also provides SMB 2 support, and the ability to run Apache 2.4. CentOS is an enterprise-class Linux platform that is derived from and aims to be functionally compatible with its upstream source, RHEL. This compatibility enables BMC to perform the same CentOS testing against the Red Hat 6 and 7 STIGs.

When applying OS upgrades to BMC Discovery 20.08, ensure that you download and apply the correct CentOS operating system upgrade.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is a separately licensed release intended for customers whose organizations require particular certifications, such as Common Criteria Security Certification. You cannot upgrade a 11.3 appliance running on CentOS 7 to an 11.3 appliance running on RHEL 7; rather, you must migrate. The various upgrade paths and more information on migration is provided in the upgrading section.

Which OS am I using?

Click here to expand...

To determine whether your appliance is running on CentOS 6, CentOS 7, or RHEL 7, check the footer of any UI page. The BMC Discovery version number, build number, and OS version are provided on the bottom line.

Alternatively, from the command line, enter:

tideway@appliance01 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release

For CentOS 6 the output begins:
CentOS release 6.x
For CentOS 7 the output begins:
CentOS Linux release 7.x
For RHEL 7 the output begins:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.x

See the BMC Discovery on CentOS 7 compared to previous versions for a summary of user-facing OS-level changes from previous BMC Discovery releases.

OS migration considerations

If any disk changes were made to the existing appliance before the migration, such as moving the datastore to a separate disk, these changes must be repeated on the new appliance. Otherwise, the restore from the old appliance may fail because of insufficient disk space.

The following file locations can be changed if needed in the $TIDEWAY/etc/link.conf file:

core datastore files
datastore log files
backup archive files

This section contains the following topics: