Andrija, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this. I'm getting my ducks in a row on the XenServer side (for the upgrade) & I'll give the plan a go.
I'll report in afterwards, wish me luck! Thanks, David David Merrill Senior Systems Engineer, Managed and Private/Hybrid Cloud Services OTELCO 92 Oak Street, Portland ME 04101 office 207.772.5678 <callto:207.772.5678> http://www.otelco.com/cloud-and-managed-services Confidentiality Message The information contained in this e-mail transmission may be confidential and legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or other use of this information, including attachments, is prohibited. If you received this message in error, please call me at 207.772.5678 <callto:207.772.5678> so this error can be corrected. On 6/30/20, 1:03 PM, "Andrija Panic" <andrija.pa...@gmail.com> wrote: Hi David, with a bit of delay... those steps need to be tested - I would skip the whole "environment.properties" file and see how it behaves today - the reason being that, though the article on shapeblue.com was old, it does mention both "Unmanage" cluster and Maintenace mode - so I'm not quite sure what is the difference today vs. how it behaved back in time of ACS 4.3 / XS 6.2 - the explanation that you've found on the mailing thread may not make sense, I mean specifically the "There wasn't an 'unmanage' button at the time", since the article clearly mentions it). There is also no need to manually migrate VM's away from a host (i.e. pool master) - simply put it into the Maintenance mode and it will move VMs away to other hosts. Assuming that putting the pool-master into Maintenance mode in ACS will, these days, NOT trigger a new host to become a master, your steps look fine. For the records, I've updated&&tested the official documentation, for XenServer 6.5+ : https://github.com/apache/cloudstack-documentation/pull/140 / https://acs-www.shapeblue.com/docs/WIP-PROOFING/pr140/installguide/hypervisor/xenserver.html#upgrading-xenserver-versions - i.e. removed unneeded steps and explained what each script is doing. This guide assumes a much longer management plane downtime, as the cluster is unmanaged while you update all the hosts in the pool. Works fine also for XCP-ng upgrades, etc. Either way, I prefer doing it based on the plan you laid out here. Regards, Andrija On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 at 23:24, David Merrill <david.merr...@otelco.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > I have a production deployment of ACS managing three XenServer Clusters > (XenServer pools of 6 hosts each) in two different Zones. I now find myself > in the position of needing to do a major version upgrade of those hosts. > Happily I have a ACS lab managing a XenServer cluster running the same > (old) version of XenServer that I can practice on. > > I have plenty of practice operating ACS to “quiesce things” for XenServer > patches (start with the pool master, move guest VMs off, put that host into > maintenance mode, unmanage the cluster, patch the host, then reverse & move > onto the next host with the same steps except we don’t bother > w/un-managing/re-managing the cluster), but as I understand a XenServer > version upgrade backs up the whole original XenServer installation to > another partition and makes a clean installation of XenServer on the > original partition (the problem there being that when the upgraded > XenServer boots up all the ACS provided/copied scripts are not there & ACS > can’t manage the host). > > So not much of an ask here (OK maybe at the end – have I missed something > obvious or doing anything foolish?), I wanted to share a bit research & lay > out a set of steps that I think will work to get a pool of XenServers in a > cluster upgraded and end up in a place where ACS is happy with them. > > Bear with me it’s a little long, > > > 1. In XenCenter – if HA is enabled for the XenServer pool, disable it > 2. Stop ACS management/usage services > 3. Do MySQL database backups > 4. Start ACS management/usage services > 5. Start with the pool master. > 6. In ACS – Migrate all guest VMs to other hosts in the cluster > 7. In ACS – Prepare to put the pool master into maintenance mode (so no > new guest VMs) > * A caveat here related to this item I found when researching – > https://www.shapeblue.com/how-to-upgrade-an-apache-cloudstack-citrix-xenserver-cluster/ > > i. A > recommendation is made here to edit > /etc/cloudstack/management/environment.properties > > ii. And > set manage.xenserver.pool.master=false > > iii. And > restart CloudStack management services > > iv. > BECAUSE if one didn’t I understand CloudStack WOULD force an election for > another host to become the pool master (which is “bad” as ASCs is > configured to speak to the currently configured pool master) > > * HOWEVER THIS MAY NOT BE NECESSARY > > i. > Found a thread titled “A Story of a failed XenServer Upgrade” here – > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/cloudstack-users/201601.mbox/browser > > ii. At > the end of the thread Paul Angus states that Geoff’s ShapeBlue blog article > was written in the ACS 4.3 era and that ACS’ behavior “used to be that > putting a host that was the pool master into maintenance would cause > CloudStack to force an election for another host to become pool master - > stopping you from then upgrading the active pool master first. There wasn't > an 'unmanage' button at the time.” > > iii. The > implication, (in my humble estimation) is that, today, one no longer needs > to make these edits to /etc/cloudstack/management/environment.properties > > 1. In ACS – Put the pool master into maintenance mode (so no new guest > VMs) > 2. In ACS – Un-manage the cluster > 3. NOW – Upgrade the XenServer pool master to the latest release > * Exercise left to the reader…(I’ll share what I end up doing) > 4. In XenServer – Do the following (found this nugget in a thread last > November about XenServer upgrades & how to re-setup the host – thanks > Richard Lawley!) > * Remove this host tag: xe host-param-remove uuid=HOSTUUID > param-name=tags > param-key=vmops-version-com.cloud.hypervisor.xenserver.resource.XenServer650R > * This makes management server set the host back up, presumably > since ACS has credentials to the host in the database it can copy all the > scripts back > 5. In ACS – Re-manage the cluster > 6. In ACS – Exit maintenance-mode for the newly upgraded host > 7. In ACS – Observe that the newly upgraded host is “Enabled” and “Up” > in the UI (Infrastructure --> Hosts) > 8. In ACS – Testing (e.g. move an existing router/VM to the upgraded > host, create new networks/VMs on the upgraded host) > 9. Rinse & repeat with the remaining XenServer pool members in the ACS > cluster. > * WITH THIS EXCEPTION: No need to manipulate management of the > cluster in ACS > 10. In XenCenter – if HA is required re-enable it > > Now all of this completely bypasses steps that are spelled out here (which > I *suspect* might now be “old”?): > > > * > http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/en/latest/installguide/hypervisor/xenserver.html#upgrading-xenserver-versions > > which asks one to run a lot of scripts (cleaning VLANs, preparing for > upgrade etc.) in addition to copying files from the management server to > the XenServer host (to set it back up again for ACS). I’m really hoping > that step 11 saves me from that. > > So (asks after all): > > > 1. Is this a reasonable/viable plan? > 2. Is my take on step 7 correct? > > Thanks for taking a look, > David > > David Merrill > Senior Systems Engineer, > Managed and Private/Hybrid Cloud Services > OTELCO > 92 Oak Street, Portland ME 04101 > office 207.772.5678<callto:207.772.5678> > http://www.otelco.com/cloud-and-managed-services > > Confidentiality Message > The information contained in this e-mail transmission may be confidential > and legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are > notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or other use of this > information, including attachments, is prohibited. If you received this > message in error, please call me at 207.772.5678<callto:207.772.5678> so > this error can be corrected. > > -- Andrija Panić
