ScaleIO 2.5 Upgrade advice

Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’m getting into ScaleIO (Software Only) so am still quite new to the ecosystem and management commands, but having just gone through an upgrade cycle to the 2.5 release (from a later version than 2.0.0.1) I thought I’d note down my experience from doing a ScaleIO 2.5 upgrade and some things that might be useful to anyone else who does this.

Please note that this is just me experience and I am not to be considered a guru in all things ScaleIO. I’m happy to be corrected and educated :)

MDM certificates

Ensure these are accepted before you begin otherwise you’ll have to accept them and restart. Not a big deal, but just one of those nice things for a smooth process :)

SLES uploads

After extracting the software upgrade there are two folders - SLES11_3 and SLES11_3.SVM. Installation Manager will show you which one you need to upload:

LIA Passwords

Mine were identical on every node and I saw no problems but I would expect there to be errors if not.

Upgrade the SDCs automatically

I don’t know whether this box should be ticked. The PDF said to tick it, and a VxRack guide said not. I would guess that this should install the vibs ready for the ESX restart, but I don’t know for sure. As it would need ESX root passwords and SSH enabled I would hope that we would get prompted.

ScaleIO GUI Tools

The GUI Tools for 2.0.0.3 appeared to work with 2.5. The guide doesn’t say when to upgrade them - I did after the install completed but before upgrading the SDCs (Hosts).

Enabling SSH on ESXi hosts

This is so much easier via the HTML5 interface !

Updating SDCs

Instead of using the ScaleIO plugin and enabling SSH / root access to upload the VIBS - why not upload the zip file to Update Manager, configure a baseline and remediate each host ? Way easier !

The power down sequence for a host with an SDS is:

Maintenance mode the SDS node
Power down the SDS node
Maintenance mode the ESXi host

Then we can remediate. Reverse the order to bring back online.

Switch the Primary/Master MDM

You will need to run the commands:

scli –login –username (you will then be prompted for a password) scli –switch_mdm_ownership –new_mdm_target_id

I got the ID from the scli –query_cluster command, where it must be one of the slave MDMs.

Rebalance/Rebuild

I love how fast this is :)

Overall, this was relatively painless upgrade with so much potential to automate - especially the ESXi section. But that’s for another post !

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