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 24.2 is fully tested and supported, and from previous releases running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 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.

 The upgrade also upgrades SSL to OpenSSL 3.0.

Related topics

System-requirements

Known-and-corrected-issues

Limitations-and-restrictions-of-this-version

Upgrading-and-configuring-Windows-proxies

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 24.2 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 November 2023 update.
Warning

There was a compatibility problem with an earlier version of the BMC Discovery upgrade to Oracle Linux 9 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_v007.nnnnnn.tgz. On EPD, the upgrade package is labeled BMC Discovery conversion CentOS/RHEL to OL9. You must not use any earlier version of the upgrade package.    

  • 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.
  • If you have integrated with the CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault, the upgrade removes the AIM provider package (it removes ALL packages before the upgrade) and you must reinstall it. However, the upgraded BMC Discovery appliance retains the configuration and name, so before reinstalling, you must remove the existing Application ID from the CyberArk Vault. Otherwise, you cannot register the upgraded appliance with the CyberArk Vault, and an error stating the integration already exists.
  • 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.  
  • If you are upgrading from a BMC Discovery version earlier than 23.3, you must install the November 2024 or later OSU.

info.pngDuring the upgrade to BMC Discovery 24.2, vCenter implicit scans might be enabled, irrespective of the previous setting. We recommend that you check that the setting is correct after the upgrade completes.

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 24.2. 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 .zip 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.v.v_nnnnnn_CentOS7.tgz - on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 24.2.0.0 from CentOS 7 Upgrade.
    • ADDM_Upgrade_vv.v.v.v_nnnnnn_RHEL7.tgz - this file is not available on EPD. If you are using BMC Discovery on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, you must contact BMC Support who will provide you with the file. 

In the example filenames, vv.v.v.v is the BMC Discovery version number to which you are upgrading and nnnnnn is 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-2024-01-1-Discovery-24.2+.zip - on EPD, at the time of release, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 24.2.00 Technology Knowledge Update (TKU) 2024-05-1, though the filename and label will change as later TKUs are released. 

Upgrades from version 23.3 and its patches

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_vv.v.v.v_nnnnnn_OL9.tgz - on EPD, this download is labelled BMC Discovery 24.2.0.0 OL9 Upgrade.
    Where vv.v.v.v is the BMC Discovery version number to which you are upgrading to and nnnnnn is the build number.

To download the upgrade files

  1. 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.
  2. Upload the upgrade archive to the /usr/tideway/var/upgrade directory 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), 23.3 (13.0), 24.1 (13.2) or 24.2 (14.0) scanning appliances can consolidate to version 24.2 consolidating appliances. However, version 24.2 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:

  1. Stop discovery on scanning appliances.
  2. Ensure that all consolidation operations are complete.
  3. Stop discovery on consolidating appliances.
  4. Upgrade consolidating appliances.
  5. Restart discovery on the consolidating appliances.
  6. Restart discovery on the scanning appliances.
  7. Upgrade scanning appliances as required.

Where to go from here

Performing-the-upgrade

 

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