Upgrade the System Controller Using the CLI¶

You can upload and apply upgrades to the system controller in order to upgrade the central repository, from the CLI. The system controller can be upgraded using either a manual software upgrade procedure or by using the non-distributed systems sw-manager orchestration procedure.

About this task

Follow the steps below to manually upgrade the system controller:

Prerequisites

Validate the list of new images with the target release. If you are using a private registry for installs/upgrades, you must populate your private registry with the new images prior to bootstrap and/or patch application.

Procedure

Source the platform environment.

$ source /etc/platform/openrc
~(keystone_admin)]$

Transfer iso and signature files to controller-0 (active controller) and import the load.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software --os-region-name SystemController upload --local <bootimage>.iso <bootimage>.sig
+-------------------------------+-------------------+
| Uploaded File                 | Release           |
+-------------------------------+-------------------+
| starlingx-intel-x86-64-cd.iso | starlingx-24.09.0 |
+-------------------------------+-------------------+
```
Note

If you face any issue while importing the load, go to /var/log/software.log and examine the error messages.

Note

This can take several minutes. After the system controller is successfully upgraded, the old load (which is in imported state) should not be deleted from load list otherwise the subcloud upgrade orchestration will fail with an error.
Apply any required software updates. After the update is installed ensure controller-0 is active.

The system controller as well as the subclouds must be ‘patch current’. All software updates related to your current StarlingX software release must be uploaded, applied, and installed.

All software updates to the new StarlingX release, only need to be uploaded and applied. The install of these software updates will occur automatically during the software upgrade procedure as the hosts are reset to load the new release of software.
Confirm that the system is healthy.

Check the current system health status, resolve any alarms and other issues reported by the software deploy precheck <release-id> command then recheck the system health status to confirm that all System Health fields are set to OK. “If the upgrade health query fails ‘Boot Device and Root file system Device’ check as seen below:”
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy precheck <release-id>
    System Health:
    All hosts are provisioned: [OK]
    All hosts are unlocked/enabled: [OK]
    All hosts have current configurations: [OK]
    Ceph Storage Healthy: [OK]
    No alarms: [OK]
    All kubernetes nodes are ready: [OK]
    All kubernetes control plane pods are ready: [OK]
    All kubernetes applications are in a valid state: [OK]
    All hosts are patch current: [OK]
    Valid upgrade path from release 22.12 to 24.09: [OK]
    Required patches are applied: [OK]
```
Where <release-id> is starlingx-24.09.0 for above software upload example, or it can be found out by running software list.

The platform issuer (system-local-ca) is required to have an RSA certificate/private key pair before upgrading. If system-local-ca was configured with a different type of certificate/private key, the upgrade pre check will fail with an informative message. In this case, the Update system-local-ca or Migrate Platform Certificates to use Cert Manager procedure needs to be executed to reconfigure system-local-ca with the RSA certificate/private key targeting the SystemController and all subclouds.

By default, the upgrade process cannot run and is not recommended to run with active alarms present. It is strongly recommended that you clear your system of all alarms before doing an upgrade.

Note

Use the command system upgrade-start --force to force the upgrade process to start and ignore non-management-affecting alarms. This should ONLY be done if these alarms do not cause an issue for the upgrades process.
Start the upgrade from controller-0.

Make sure that controller-0 is the active controller, and you are logged into controller-0 as sysadmin and your present working directory is your home directory.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy start <release-id>
+--------------+------------+------+--------------+
| From Release | To Release | RR   | State        |
+--------------+------------+------+--------------+
| 22.12.0      | 24.09.0    | True | deploy-start |
+--------------+------------+------+--------------+
```
When deploy start is complete:
```
+--------------+------------+------+-------------------+
| From Release | To Release | RR   | State             |
+--------------+------------+------+-------------------+
| 22.12.0      | 24.09.0    | True | deploy-start-done |
+--------------+------------+------+-------------------+
```
This will make a copy of the system data to be used in the upgrade. Configuration changes must not be made after this point, until the upgrade is completed.

The following upgrade state applies once this command is executed. Run the system upgrade-show command to verify the status of the upgrade.
- started:
  - State entered after system upgrade-start completes.
  - Release <nn.nn> system data (for example, postgres databases) has been exported to be used in the upgrade.
As part of the upgrade, the upgrade process checks the health of the system and validates that the system is ready for an upgrade.

The upgrade process checks that no alarms are active before starting an upgrade.

Note

Use the command system upgrade-start --force to force the upgrades process to start and to ignore management affecting alarms. This should only be done if these alarms do not cause an issue for the upgrades process.

The fm alarm-list --mgmt_affecting option provides specific alarms which may be blocking an orchestrated upgrade.

On systems with Ceph storage, it also checks that the Ceph cluster is healthy.
Upgrade controller-1.
1. Lock controller-1.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-lock controller-1
```
2. Start the upgrade on controller-1.
  
  Controller-1 installs the update and reboots, then performs data migration.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy host controller-1
Running major release deployment, major_release=24.09, force=False, async_req=False, commit_id=<commit-id>
Host installation was successful on controller-1
```
3. Unlock controller-1.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-unlock controller-1
```
  Wait for controller-1 to enter the unlocked-enabled state. Wait until the DRBD sync 400.001 Services-related alarm has been raised and then cleared.
  
  The upgrading-controllers state applies when this command is run. This state is entered after controller-1 has been upgraded to release nn.nn and data migration is successfully completed.
  
  where nn.nn in the update file name is the StarlingX release number.
  
  If it transitions to unlocked-disabled-failed, check the issue before proceeding to the next step. The alarms may indicate a configuration error. Check the result of the configuration logs on controller-1, (for example, Error logs in controller1:/var/log/puppet).
4. Run the system application-list and software deploy host-list commands to view the current progress.
  
  After controller-1 is unlocked/enabled/available, insert step to check controller-1 is running the new release:
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-show controller-1
```
Set controller-1 as the active controller. Swact to controller-1.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-swact controller-0
```
Wait until services have gone active on the new active controller-1 before proceeding to the next step. When all services on controller-1 are enabled-active, the swact is complete.

Note

Continue the remaining steps below to manually upgrade or use upgrade orchestration to upgrade the remaining nodes.
Upgrade controller-0.

For more information, see Introduction.
1. Lock controller-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-lock controller-0
```
2. Upgrade controller-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy host controller-0
```
  Note
  
  controller-0 must pxe-boot over the management network and its load must be served from controller-1, and not from any external pxe-boot server attached to the OAM network. To ensure this, check that the network boot list/order of BIOS NIC is correct.
3. Unlock controller-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-unlock controller-0
```
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy host controller-0
```
  You may encounter the following error message:
```
Expecting number of interface sriov_numvfs=16. Please wait a few
minutes for inventory update and retry host-unlock.
```
  If you see this error message, you need to retry after 5 minutes.
  
  Wait until the DRBD sync 400.001 Services-related alarm has been raised and then cleared before proceeding to the next step.
  - upgrading-hosts:
    - State entered when both controllers are running release <nn.nn> software.
Check the system health to ensure that there are no unexpected alarms.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ fm alarm-list
```
Clear all alarms unrelated to the upgrade process.
If using Ceph storage backend, upgrade the storage nodes one at a time.

The storage node must be locked and all OSDs must be down in order to do the upgrade.
1. Lock storage-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-lock storage-0
```
2. Verify that the OSDs are down after the storage node is locked.
  
  In the Horizon interface, navigate to Admin > Platform > Storage Overview to view the status of the OSDs.
3. Upgrade storage-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy host storage-0
```
  The upgrade is complete when the node comes online, and at that point, you can safely unlock the node.
  
  After upgrading a storage node, but before unlocking, there are Ceph synchronization alarms (that appear to be making progress in synching), and there are infrastructure network interface alarms (since the infrastructure network interface configuration has not been applied to the storage node yet, as it has not been unlocked).
  
  Unlock the node as soon as the upgraded storage node comes online.
4. Unlock storage-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-unlock storage-0
```
  Wait for all alarms to clear after the unlock before proceeding to upgrade the next storage host.
5. Repeat the above steps for each storage host.
  
  Note
  
  After upgrading the first storage node you can expect alarm 800.003. The alarm is cleared after all storage nodes are upgraded.
If worker nodes are present, upgrade worker hosts, serially or in parallel, if any.
1. Lock worker-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-lock worker-0
```
2. Upgrade worker-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy host worker-0
```
  Wait for the host to run the installer, reboot, and go online before unlocking it in the next step.
3. Unlock worker-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-unlock worker-0
```
  Wait for all alarms to clear after the unlock before proceeding to the next worker host.
4. Repeat the above steps for each worker host.
Set controller-0 as the active controller. Swact to controller-0.
```
~(keystone_admin)]$ system host-swact controller-1
```
Wait until services have gone active on the active controller-0 before proceeding to the next step. When all services on controller-0 are enabled-active, the swact is complete.

Activate the upgrade.

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy activate
Deploy activate has started

Check deploy state:

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy show
+--------------+------------+------+-----------------+
| From Release | To Release | RR   | State           |
+--------------+------------+------+-----------------+
| 22.12.0      | 24.09.0    | True | deploy-activate |
+--------------+------------+------+-----------------+

When activate is complete:

+--------------+------------+------+----------------------+
| From Release | To Release | RR   | State                |
+--------------+------------+------+----------------------+
| 22.12.0      | 24.09.0    | True | deploy-activate-done |
+--------------+------------+------+----------------------+

During the running of the upgrade-activate command, new configurations are applied to the controller. 250.001 (hostname Configuration is out-of-date) alarms are raised and are cleared as the configuration is applied. The upgrade state goes from activating to activation-complete once this is done.

The following states apply when this command is executed.

activation-requested: State entered when system upgrade-activate is executed.
activating: State entered when we have started activating the upgrade by applying new configurations to the controller and compute hosts.
activating-hosts: State entered when applying host-specific configurations. This state is entered only if needed.
activation-complete: State entered when new configurations have been applied to all controller and compute hosts.

Check the status of the upgrade again to see it has reached activation-complete, for example.

~(keystone_admin)]$ system upgrade-show
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property     | Value                                |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| uuid         | 61e5fcd7-a38d-40b0-ab83-8be55b87fee2 |
| state        | activation-complete                  |
| from_release | nn.nn                                |
| to_release   | nn.nn                                |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+

Note

This can take more than half an hour to complete.

Note

Alarms are generated as the subcloud load sync_status is “out-of-sync”.

Complete the upgrade.

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy complete
Deployment has been completed

Verify deploy state:

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy show,
+--------------+------------+------+------------------+
| From Release | To Release | RR   | State            |
+--------------+------------+------+------------------+
| 22.12.0      | 24.09.0    | True | deploy-completed |
+--------------+------------+------+------------------+

Run the system upgrade-show command, and the status will display “no upgrade in progress”. The subclouds will be out-of-sync.

Upgrade Kubernetes, after deploy is completed. When Kubernetes upgrade completes, conclude the deploy by deleting it.

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy delete, output
Deploy deleted with success

Verify deploy state:

~(keystone_admin)]$ software deploy show, output
No deploy in progress

Upgrade the System Controller Using the CLI

Upgrade the System Controller Using the CLI¶

StarlingX