Upgrading a Data Fabric

Describes how to upgrade your fabric and what to know before upgrading.

Upgrading to a newer Data Fabric release is supported both for on-premises and cloud-based fabrics.

Before Upgrading

Here are some things you should know about the upgrade process:
  • Upgrades do not happen automatically. The fabric manager must initiate an upgrade.
  • It is a best practice to upgrade to the latest Data Fabric software as soon as you are prompted. Upgrades provide new features and fix defects that can affect your ability to use the Data Fabric.
  • You can upgrade only to the latest currently supported Data Fabric version. For example, if your fabric is running release 7.4.0 and an upgrade to release 7.6.1 is available, you will have the option to upgrade to release 7.6.1 but not to release 7.5.0. For a list of supported releases, see Release History.
  • The upgrade proceeds one node at a time as a "rolling" upgrade. This means that the Data Fabric UI is running on a node that eventually will get shut down and upgraded. At that point, the UI will become temporarily unusable.
  • Upgrades initiated through the Data Fabric UI are supported only for fabrics that have a consumption-based license. A customer-managed Data Fabric with a term-based license cannot be upgraded in the same way.
  • If your fabric has fewer than three nodes, you can expect the entire fabric to be unavailable for the client user during the upgrade. If your fabric has three or more nodes, the fabric will still work during the upgrade, and all client operations will continue to work. However, the upgrade of the node hosting the Data Fabric UI will cause the UI to go offline intermittently until the node is upgraded.

Special Considerations for Upgrading from Release 7.4.0

Note these special considerations for upgrading from release 7.4.0 to a later Data Fabric release:
  • You must initiate the upgrade from the primary fabric in the global namespace. If you initiate the upgrade from a fabric that is not the primary, you might not be able to monitor the upgrade status while the upgrade is in progress. To identify the primary fabric, issue the following maprcli command:
    maprcli clustergroup getcgtable -showprimary true -json
    To access a maprcli prompt, see Displaying a maprcli Prompt.
  • Because of a known issue (EZINDFAAS-581), upgrades from release 7.4.0 to 7.5.0 can fail because the keypair.pem file has the wrong permissions. This issue affects upgrades on AWS, Azure, and GCP, but does NOT affect upgrades for on-premises fabrics.

    To prevent the issue, you must change the file permissions BEFORE upgrading from release 7.4.0 to 7.5.0. Use the following steps:

    1. Find the installer node on your cloud fabric. The installer node has the keypair.pem file. When you create a fabric using the seed node deployment steps, the seed node displays the endpoint of the installer node.

      You can also identify the installer node because it is the node that contains the tmp/terraform_output.json file in the deployment directory.

    2. Use the steps in SSH Access to a Cloud-Based Fabric to ssh to the installer node and display a Linux prompt.
    3. Change to the directory containing the keypair.pem file. For example:
      cd /opt/mapr/installer/ezdfaas/deployments/<name_of_cloud_fabric>/infrastructure/terraform/[aws|azure|gcp]/<name_of_new_cloud_fabric>-keypair.pem
    4. Use the chmod command to change the file permissions:
      chmod -R 0400 <pem-file-name>
    5. When you are ready, initiate the upgrade from release 7.4.0 to 7.5.0.

Checking to See if an Upgrade Is Supported for Your Fabric

The Data Fabric UI prompts you when an upgrade is supported for the current version of your software. For example:

If you are not sure that an upgrade is supported, you can check for supported upgrades by using the following steps:
  1. Sign in to the Data Fabric UI as a fabric manager.
  2. Click the Fabric manager experience.
  3. Click the Global namespace button. The UI displays the fabrics in your global namespace.
  4. See the Version column in the table.
    IMPORTANT Version information for a fabric is displayed only if you have obtained a consumption-based license and added the activation key.
    If the Version column includes a prompt to upgrade to a newer release, an upgrade is supported for the fabric. For example:

How to Upgrade

To begin the upgrade process:
  1. Click the Upgrade to <7.n.n> link. The Data Fabric UI displays the Upgrade fabric form:

  2. Fill in the information requested by the form. For more information, see Upgrade Fabric Parameters.
  3. Click Upgrade. The Upgrade fabric status dialog box is displayed:

    IMPORTANT You can minimize the status dialog box, but do not close the dialog box until the upgrade is complete. If you close the dialog box, you will not be able to reopen it.
    When the upgrade is successful, the value in the Version column shows the new version (for example, 7.5.0)

Troubleshooting Upgrade Issues

If an upgrade fails, position your cursor over the failure message in the Data Fabric UI to obtain more information. For example:

Try to determine which node failed and the reason for the failure. In some cases, you can fix the issue manually. For example, if there is a repository or network issue, you might be able to resolve the issue on your own. You can then reinitiate the upgrade.
To reinitiate the upgrade:
  1. In the global namespace list of resources, click the ellipsis () for the fabric to be upgraded. The available commands are displayed.
  2. Click Reinitiate. The Upgrade fabric form is displayed.
  3. Fill in any empty values in the Upgrade fabric form.
  4. Click Upgrade.

If the failure cannot be resolved manually, contact HPE Support.