These instructions describe how to upgrade a Zeus Traffic Manager or Zeus Load Balancer appliance (virtual or hardware). For instructions on upgrading Zeus software, please see here, and for instructions on EC2, please see here.
Before you start
There are a few things that have to be checked before an upgrade is attempted to make sure it goes smoothly.
Memory requirements
Make sure the machine has enough memory: Zeus Traffic Manager version 7 requires at the very least 1GB of RAM. 2GB or more are recommended. If the traffic manager in question has less memory, please assign more memory to the virtual machine.
Disk Space requirements
Make sure there is enough free disk space: For the upgrade to succeed, at least 500Mb must be free on the root partition, and at least 300MB on the /logs partition. The unix command df shows how much space is available, for example:
root@zeus-vm06-3/ # df -k Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 1426384 839732 514764 62% / varrun 517680 44 517636 1% /var/run varlock 517680 0 517680 0% /var/lock udev 517680 48 517632 1% /dev devshm 517680 0 517680 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 139985 8633 124125 7% /boot /dev/sda8 621536 17516 604020 3% /logs
If the disks are too full, you have to free up some space. Please follow the suggestions in the topic 'How do I free up disk space in the Zeus Appliance?'.
Upgrading the Appliance
Zeus software is stored on one of two primary partitions, and log files are stored on a separate disk partition.
When you install a release with a new version number, it is installed in the unused primary partition, configuration (including the /root directory) is migrated across and the bootloader updated to point to the new partition. You can edit the bootloader configuration to fall back to the other primary partition if you need to roll back to a previous major release.
When you install a release with a new revision number, it adds the new installation files to the currently active primary partition. You can use the 'rollback' script to make a previous revision active.
Upgrading to a later revision
Upgrading revisions in the same product version (e.g. 7.1r1 to 7.1r2) are performed using the Administration Server. Download the upgrade package from your customer page, go to the System -> Upgrade page, upload the upgrade package, and follow the instructions.
You will need to complete this process for each Appliance in your cluster.
Expected downtime for an upgrade will be a couple of seconds while the Traffic Management software is restarted. Sometimes it will be necessary to reboot the Appliance to complete the upgrade. The user interface will inform you if this is necessary when the upgrade is complete. You should ensure that the Appliance is rebooted at the most appropriate time.
Upgrading to a later version
Upgrades between minor and major versions (e.g. 4.1 to 4.2 or 5.1 to 6.0) are performed using a commandline script to install the new version into a spare section of the hard disk. This process involves one reboot and the downtime associated with that reboot.
- Before upgrading it is prudent to have a backup of your configuration.
- Download the installation
zpkgpackage from customer.zeus.com. This will be a file called something like ZeusTM_60_Appliance-x86_64.zpkg. - Copy the file onto the appliance using an scp or sftp client (e.g. psftp).
- Connect to the console of the appliance using an 'ssh' client (putty is a good choice). You can use any username that is in the admin group.
- Check the disk space requirements explained above are still fulfilled after you've uploaded the package.
- Once connected to the console of the appliance run: upgrade-appliance <filename>:
- Confirm that you want to upgrade the appliance.
- Once complete the new version will be automatically selected after the next reboot. Any configuration changes made in the existing version (e.g. in 4.1) after the upgrade-appliance script has been run won't be preserved when the new version is started.
- It is recommended that you reboot the appliance as soon as possible (using the System -> Reboot button in the UI or using the 'reboot' command).
Intermediate Steps
When skipping versions, you must upgrade to the 'r0' release first and then apply the upgrade to the latest revision as described above. For example if you want to upgrade from 6.0r1 to 7.0r1, you need to take two steps:
6.0r1 -> 7.0 -> 7.0r1
Installation caveats for earlier releases
The following caveats only apply to the early versions of Zeus software listed below.
Upgrades to version 5.1r2 or earlier
When upgrading a virtual or hardware appliance to version 5.1r2 or earlier, you should not skip version numbers; you must apply the 'r0' upgrade packages for each intervening major and minor version. For example, to upgrade from version 4.2 to version 5.1r2, you should upgrade as follows: 4.2 -> 5.0r0 -> 5.1r0 -> 5.1r2. This caveat does not apply if upgrading from 4.1 (or later) directly to 6.0 (or later). You can upgrade directly to your chosen major release (e.g. 6.0), then directly to the desired 'r' release as described above.
Upgrades from version 4.0
To upgrade a hardware appliance from ZXTM 4.0, you need to follow these instructions instead.
Traffic IP Group issues when upgrading from version 4.1
If you have Traffic IP Groups using the 'keeptogether' flag that contain 'passive' machines, you should mark all machines as active before upgrading from ZXTM 4.1 to ZXTM 4.2 or later. Once the upgrade is complete, set these machines to 'passive' again. Releases prior to 4.2 don't correctly handle the combination of keeptogether flag and passive machines, so leaving your configuration unchanged while upgrading may cause Traffic IP addresses to appear on multiple ZXTM machines.
More Information
For more detailed information, please refer to the appropriate 'Getting Started' guide in the product documentation.
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