Upgrading Cluster

The Live Upgrades feature allows you to upgrade the managed devices and APs in a cluster to the latest ArubaOS version. Managed devices in a cluster can be seamlessly upgraded by specifying the new image file and a target partition. This is a real-time network upgrade where managed devices and APs upgrade automatically without any planned maintenance downtime.

You can also schedule an upgrade to a specified time to avoid manual intervention. The cluster is upgraded automatically at the scheduled time. You can view, delete, or reschedule the scheduled cluster upgrade.

The live upgrade process is optimized to take less time to upgrade all the devices. The upgrade process skips mesh point and mesh portal upgrade during live upgrade but these APs will go standard upgrade when the last managed device in the cluster successfully upgrades.

When a cluster is upgraded, the following actions take place:

  1. The cluster upgrade manager sends information of the APs to AirMatch.
  2. The AirMatch creates logical groups of APs and updates the cluster upgrade manager with this information.
  3. A target managed device is assigned to all APs in each partition.
  4. The managed devices download the new firmware. The following events happen after the firmware download:
    1. For each managed device, irrespective of the partitions, AP image preload is initiated for a small capacity of the AP platform. For example, 1/8th capacity of the AP platform at a time.
    2. Once all the APs preload for each managed device, the next few APs are preloaded and this step is repeated till all the APs are preloaded.
  5. Once all the APs are preloaded, a target managed device is selected and rebooted.
  6. After the target managed device boots up, partition targeted to this managed device is selected and an AP move is initiated. Once all the APs are rebooted, the next partition is selected and an AP move is initiated.
  7. Once all the partitions targeted to the targeted managed device are upgraded successfully, another target managed device is selected and step 6 is repeated till all the managed devices are rebooted successfully.

Following section describes how to configure Live upgrade and the limitations of live upgrade:

Configuring Live Upgrade

The following procedure describes how to upgrade the cluster:

  1. Log in to a Mobility Master.
  2. In the Managed Network node hierarchy, navigate to Maintenance > Software Management..
  3. Select one or multiple clusters from the table. The table only lists the clusters and not the cluster members.

    The table displays the Name of the cluster, the number of managed devices, the number of APs in the cluster, and the version of software running on the managed devices of the cluster.

  1. In the INSTALLATION SETTINGS > When menu, select Now.
  2. In the Image File section, specify the image file location, name, and the protocol to use. Enter values for the following parameters:
  1. Click Next.
  2. In the Target Partition section, specify the managed device partition where you want to install the firmware and where you want it to boot from. Select any one of the following partitions:
    • Partition 0
    • Partition 1
    • auto
  1. Click Install to start the cluster upgrade process.
  2. To check the status of the upgrade, in the Managed Network node hierarchy, navigate to Configuration > Services > Cluster.
  3. The upgrade status for cluster name section is displayed with the status of the upgrade. The status of the upgrade can be any of the following values:
    • Upgrade pending
    • AP partitioning in progress
    • Upgrade in progress
    • Upgrade failed
    • Upgrade completed
  1. The status of each managed device is displayed. Similarly, the status for each AP in the cluster is also displayed.
  2. You can also upgrade a cluster using the shortcut icon by navigating to Configuration > Services > Cluster and selecting the cluster you want to upgrade.

Execute the following command to trigger the cluster upgrade in the Mobility Master:

(host) [mm] [cluster1] #lc-cluster <cluster_name> initiate upgrade version <img_version> partition <partition_id>

  • cluster_name: The configured cluster profile name; corresponds to the managed devices and APs associated to the cluster that needs to be upgraded.
  • img_version: The target image version, such as 8.2.1_XXXXX.
  • partition_id: The partition on the managed device to which the new image is to be copied, valid values are 0 or 1 and this is optional. If the partition is not specified, it automatically picks the alternate boot partition.

The fileserver is configured in upgrade profile. Ensure that the upgrade profile is configured before upgrading the cluster using the CLI Command-Line Interface. A console interface with a command line shell that allows users to execute text input as commands and convert these commands to appropriate functions..

To check the status of the upgrade, for Cluster1, execute the following show commands:

(host)#show lc-cluster cluster1 controller details

(host)#show lc-cluster cluster1 ap details

(host)#show lc-cluster cluster1 upgrade status

(host)#show lc-cluster cluster1 upgrade status verbose

(host)#show lc-cluster cluster1 upgrade stats

Limitation

This feature has the following limitations:

  • As there is an image preload limitation, cluster upgrade cannot be done with two different versions without reloading the managed devices. Only one preload per managed device reboot is allowed currently.
  • The state of the AP preload is not displayed in the WebUI during the cluster upgrade.
  • Cluster upgrade cannot be triggered if a previous upgrade resulted in split subclusters.
  • Cluster Rolling Upgrade is not supported on mesh nodes. Therefore, a cluster upgrade cannot be performed for mesh deployments.
  • It is not recommended to use live upgrade in MultiZone deployments. Each zone can use live upgrade but the upgrade on datazone is not hitless.