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Treasury's avatar
Treasury
Level 2
13 years ago
Solved

Upgrade from VCS, VXVM 4.0 to 5.1

Hello guys.

Not sure if im posting this to the correct forum, if not please let me know.

 

What: To upgrade Veritas VCS and VXVM from 4.0 to 5.1 SP1

Involved Servers: treassun40 and 41. 

Environment: Clustered (Veritas cluster)

treassun40: Application
treassun41: Database

OS: Solaris 9 (SPARC)

 

Hello guys I have been tasked with the upgrade of VCS and VXVM (not sure if this is storage foundation).

I will be running the SORT utility later on.

My first questions are.

1. Has anyone performed this before?

2. Have read some of the documentation and know that there is no direct upgrade path from 4.0 to 5.1, it is recommended to do a full uninstall and reinstall 5.1: question here is, I just remove old software reinstall 5.1 and what then?, how do I import old data?, do I need to backup any config files so our previous config is respected?

3. What common pitfalls can I face during this upgrade?

 

I will post the findings of the SORT utility once I run it.

 

Thank you for your help and support.

 

Best regards.

 

 

 

 

business continuity
Storage Foundation
  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    13 years ago

    I've done a few upgrades from 4.x to 5.x and I never use the upgrade scripts even if they supported I just remove old software and install new.  5.1 software can import diskgroups from 4.0 without any special flags and you can optionally upgrade the diskgroup version and filesystem layout later using vxdg upgrade and vxupgrade - I do this about week later so I can back-out software upgrade if there are any problems with new software.  For VCS you will probably need to manually change main.cf for changes in resource attributes and deprecated agents - see Appendix C in the VCS install guide for detailed information.

    You also need to upgrade types files, which involves looking at existing types files (types.cf OracleTypes.cf etc) to see if you have tuned any attriubutes (timeouts and restarts etc) and then when you upgrade you copy the new types files in place and then apply any attributing tuning.

    I backup all VCS files in /etc - llttab, llthost, gabtab, vxfen* and /etc/VRTSvcs/conf/config/*/cf and take copies of vxvm config - vxprint -th (readable format) and vxprint -m (detailed attributes).

    The only problems I have had is when boot disks are encapsulated and I have tried to do upgrade with unencapsulating first,so I would recommend unencapsulating boot disks if they are currently encapsulated.

    I have seen many people forget to upgrade types files or upgrade them and forget to apply attribute tuning that was in place on old version.

    Mike

5 Replies

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  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    I've done a few upgrades from 4.x to 5.x and I never use the upgrade scripts even if they supported I just remove old software and install new.  5.1 software can import diskgroups from 4.0 without any special flags and you can optionally upgrade the diskgroup version and filesystem layout later using vxdg upgrade and vxupgrade - I do this about week later so I can back-out software upgrade if there are any problems with new software.  For VCS you will probably need to manually change main.cf for changes in resource attributes and deprecated agents - see Appendix C in the VCS install guide for detailed information.

    You also need to upgrade types files, which involves looking at existing types files (types.cf OracleTypes.cf etc) to see if you have tuned any attriubutes (timeouts and restarts etc) and then when you upgrade you copy the new types files in place and then apply any attributing tuning.

    I backup all VCS files in /etc - llttab, llthost, gabtab, vxfen* and /etc/VRTSvcs/conf/config/*/cf and take copies of vxvm config - vxprint -th (readable format) and vxprint -m (detailed attributes).

    The only problems I have had is when boot disks are encapsulated and I have tried to do upgrade with unencapsulating first,so I would recommend unencapsulating boot disks if they are currently encapsulated.

    I have seen many people forget to upgrade types files or upgrade them and forget to apply attribute tuning that was in place on old version.

    Mike

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    Excellent advice from Mike.

    Just my 2c:

    Check/verify if boot disks are encapsulated. Unencapsulate before removing software.

    Check/verify that diskgroup version is up to date (it might not be if system was previously upgraded from 3.x version)

    Check/verify disk layout version on VxFS filesystems - only file systems with disk layout Version 6 and Version 7 can be imported on SF 5.1.

     

  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    Thank Marianne - this raises an interesting point which is not clear in the manuals - I don't know if you have any experience of this as to what is actually possible:

    According to vxvm admin guide, really old diskgroups can be imported so you can import diskgroups from before 3.5 and there are no contradictions here, but although you can import diskgroups, you can't mount filesystem of layout 5 or earlier (in 5.1SP1).  You can use vxupgrade to upgrade filesystems, but the manual says the filesystems must be mounted to upgrade:

    vxupgrade operates on file systems mounted for read/write access: mount_point must be a mounted VxFS file system

    which would imply you can't upgrade a version 5 filesystem as it cannot be mounted.  The vxfs admin guide says you can use vxfsconvert to upgrade layouts 1 & 2 to version 7, but it is unclear how you can upgrade versions 3, 4 & 5.  But if you look at vxupgrade manual page it says 

    Each version upgrade requires a separate invocation of the vxupgrade command. For example, to upgrade from disk layout Version 4 to Version 7, you must upgrade to Version 5 first, then 6, then 7

    So this implies you can upgrade layouts 4 & 5 and the 5.1SP1 vxupgrade man page also says:

    Upgrading from disk layout Version 5 to Version 6 changes all inodes in the file system

    Which is even more clear that version 5 can be upgraded.

    So I do believe you can upgrade any filesystem layout and either you need to upgrade layouts 3, 4 & 5 whilst umounted, or you can actually mount them and it is just these layouts are not actually supported by 5.1SP1, so you shouldn't use them long term, but you can mount so you can upgrade, but the vxfs admin guide does say "Version 1, 2, 4, and 5 file systems cannot be created nor mounted", so I am guessing you can use vxupgrade on an umounted filesystem.

    If anyone can clarify this, it would be interesting to know and perhaps this could be made a little clearer in the vxfs admin guide.  Also I don't know why the vxfs admin guide describes layouts 4 & 5 in great detail when they cannot be used.

    Mike

  • g_lee's avatar
    g_lee
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    For VxFS - if you're installing 5.1SP1 or above you can use vxupgrade to upgrade the filesystem disk layout version from version 4 or 5.

    If you were installing 5.1GA/RP1/RP2 (ie: an earlier release than 5.1SP1) then you would need the hotfix detailed in technote 78028:

    http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH78028

    The technote seems to support Mike's assumption that 5.1 will allow mount for upgrade purposes only (ie: versions 4 & 5 able to mount for immediate upgrade; for ongoing use, 5.1 still only supports versions 6 and 7)

    re: why versions 4 and 5 are still covered in detail in the administrator's guide - for 5.1 I assume this was probably just leftover/left as reference from previous versions (4.1, 5.0, etc) - these seem to have been cleaned up in the 5.1SP1 VxFS admin guide (covers versions 6, 7, 8 only)

  • Treasury's avatar
    Treasury
    Level 2
    13 years ago

    Hello.

    Thank you so much for all your replys guys. I will have to read all your comments and get backup to you. I have runned the SORT utility and found out that I will need to upgrade the O.S. first in order to upgrade VXVM.

    So this Veritas volume manager upgrade will be put on hold for about a week.

    Now my concern (as I have not done this before) is how to unmirror the O.S. disks (I would have a failback plan in case of O.S. upgrade failure) , they are controlled by VXVM. 

    I Will open a new forum quesiton for this.

    Regards.