Discovery: How to perform OS Upgrade on the Discovery Appliance? INCLUDES VIDEO

Product

BMC Discovery

Component

BMC Discovery

Applies to

11x,12x

Question

How to perform OS Upgrade on the Discovery Appliance?

Answer

About Discovery OS Upgrade:

The software on a BMC Discovery appliance, whether a downloaded virtual appliance or a kickstarted hardware appliance, consists of the operating system (OS) and the BMC Discovery application software.

Upgrades of the appliances OS must be done using an OS upgrade (OSU) package provided by BMC. When the BMC Discovery application software is upgraded, that upgrade includes the latest OS upgrade at the time of its release.

Red Hat releases bug fixes and security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) frequently, and Oracle Linux and CentOS subsequently incorporates these updates. Each month BMC creates OS upgrades containing the subset of RHEL, Oracle Linux and CentOS packages applicable to BMC Discovery.

It is anticipated that most customers will not consider it necessary to upgrade the OS on their appliance every time BMC releases an OS upgrade package, however, each customer needs to determine their own patching and upgrade policy. In order to assist with this assessment, BMC will highlight any patches to serious defects or security vulnerabilities that affect BMC Discovery when announcing its availability to customers with a support contract.

OS upgrades are cumulative, that is, when the latest OS upgrade package is installed, all packages are upgraded to the current version. It is not required to apply any previous upgrade before applying the latest.

The preferred method of upgrading the operating system, in standalone or clustered systems, is to use the upgrade UI. If one do chooses to use the script described in upgrading the operating system, only the local machine is updated (not the cluster) and it is not rebooted automatically.

NOTE: Do not download and apply CentOS patches
It is most important that OS patches released by Oracle Linux, CentOS or Red Hat are not downloaded and applied to the appliance; this might result in reduced rather than enhanced security. For example, a patch might reinitialize a service, modify security configurations, or change kernel parameters, all of which can cause unexpected behavior.

OS Upgrade Steps:

1) Find out the current OSU version:

From the CLI, run the command:

$rpm -q tideway-appliance

It will return a value similar to tideway-appliance-7.21.08.11-837561.centos7.x86_64

OR

From the UI, navigate to Help (look for the circle with a question mark) > About, it will display information similar to this:

BMC Discovery 12.1.0.1 , Enterprise Edition
Product Content 2.0.2020.11.1
Network Devices 5.0.2020.11.1
OS Updates 7.20.08.25

The "OS Updates 7.20.08.25" can be interpreted as:

7 = the OS type/version (in this case RHEL 7 or CentOS 7, in case of 9 this means Oracle Linux 9)
20 = year, i.e. 2020
08 = month, i.e. August
25 = day of the OS update

So the OS Update is from August 25, 2020.

2) Find out the latest OSU release available for the version:

The latest operating system upgrade is documented in the following links, select the one for your OS

3) Download the OS upgrade file:

The script is operating system and architecture-specific. Download the one appropriate to your architecture, and its associated checksum from the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) site. The compressed script name is of the following form:

- ADDM_OS_Upgrade_OL_64_9.yy.mm.dd_nnnnnn_ga.sh.gz (Oracle Linux 9)
- ADDM_OS_Upgrade_CentOS_64_V.yy.mm.dd_nnnnnn_ga.sh.gz (CentOS 6 and 7)
- ADDM_OS_Upgrade_64_V.yy.mm.dd_nnnnnn_ga.sh.gz (RHEL
- ADDM_OS_Upgrade_RHEL_64_7.yy.mm.dd_nnnnnn_ga.sh.gz (RHEL 7)

Where:

- V is the RHEL/CentOS version
- 9 stands for Oracle Linux 9
- yy.mm.dd is the date of the last package update from Red Hat or CentOS, as appropriate to the OS type or version
- nnnnnn is the build number

Location of the OS upgrade files on EPD

The latest OS upgrade files are available for download from the BMC EPD site. Log on to the EPD site with your Support Contract ID and password. From the Licensed Products tab, perform the steps corresponding to your product:

1. Navigate to BMC Discovery.
2. Select the Products tab
3. The directory contains the latest OS upgrade files and associated checksums. OS Upgrade on OL 9, 64 bit: Supports BMC Discovery new installations of version 23.3 or later.

4) Upgrade the OS:

The upgrade is a compressed shell script that contains all of the required packages and binaries.

The preferred method of upgrading the operating system, in standalone or clustered systems, is to use the upgrade UI .

You can also upgrade the operating system using the command line utility, tw_run_upgrade. The tw_run_upgrade utility is recommended only if there is an upgrade issue and you are required to resolve it by using the options provided by the utility. If you do choose to run the command line utility, only the local machine is updated (not the cluster) and it is not rebooted automatically.

Use the following steps to upgrade BMC Discovery by using the UI:

1. From the main menu, click on Administration > Upgrade, check the Pre-Upgrade Check section.
2. If your browser supports HTML5: Click the Upload button and choose the upgrade archive from your file system and click upload again.
  A progress bar shows the progress of the upload.
3. If your browser does not supports HTML5:
  - - From the command prompt, copy the upgrade archive file to the /usr/tideway/var/upgrade directory.
    - After the upgrade archive is uploaded, click Check for upgrade archive in the UI.
4. The upgrade installer now provides you with an option to perform the upgrade in advanced mode or regular mode. With Advanced mode, you can prepare the upgrade, including distributing the upgrade files, and defer executing the upgrade until later. This option is useful for clustered environments.
5. Depending on whether you want to upgrade using the regular mode or advanced mode, click one of the following steps:
  - To perform the upgrade in regular mode:
    1. Click Apply Upgrade.
      If you are using a cluster, the archive is distributed to other members of the cluster. The upgrade runs and when it completes, the system reboots.
      
      To complete the upgrade, and start using the new version, you must open the credentials vault using the existing passphrase. The credentials cannot be upgraded until the vault has been opened. Once this is done the upgrade is complete and you can then change the passphrase.
  - To perform the upgrade in advanced mode:
    1. Select the Advanced Mode check box.
    2. Click Prepare Upgrade.
      The upgrade files in the compressed upgrade archive are extracted and the UI displays the status in the progress bar and notifies you on completion.
    3. (Only if you are upgrading a cluster) Click Distribute Upgrade.
      When the distribution starts, you can monitor the progress of the distribution for all the cluster members. Once the distribution is completed, you see a screen similar to this:
    4. Click Run Upgrade.
      A window shows the progress of the upgrade and details of the upgrade. When the upgrade completes, the system reboots.
      
      To complete the upgrade, and start using the new version, you must open the credentials vault using the existing passphrase. The credentials cannot be upgraded until the vault has been opened. Once this is done the upgrade is complete and you can then change the passphrase.
  After the upgrade process completes, the system reboots. If you are a user with Admin privileges, you can view the upgrade notifications by clicking the User Notification Messages icon in the dynamic toolbox. The messages displayed include warnings and errors.

Video: Please review the following video:

Additional Details - Please refer following links:

Knowledge Article