Terminology

  • The downlevel (software) version is the version being upgraded from.

  • The uplevel (software) version is the version being upgraded to.

  • The installed (software) version refers to the REM software currently running.

  • orca is a command-line tool which can perform a variety of maintenance operations on Rhino clusters and REM. It is delivered within the upgrade package, and drives the whole upgrade process, connecting to each of the hosts and running commands on them remotely.

  • An upgrade bundle is a zip file containing the uplevel software, orca, the new REM software and/or REM plugins, plus ancillary resources required during the upgrade process. Upgrade bundles are provided to customers by Metaswitch Customer Care.

REM upgrade bundles

REM upgrade bundles can contain updated REM software, and/or REM plugins.

The information of which plugins to upgrade are present in the packages.cfg file.

When applying a REM upgrade which includes plugins:

  • Plugins in the bundle which are not already in the system will be added to the REM installation

  • Plugins in the bundle for which there was already a downlevel version will overwrite the older versions

  • Plugins in the old installation for which no equivalent is found in the bundle will be left in place, but the user will be prompted regarding this case during the upgrade process.

Upgrade process overview

Upgrading REM involves the following steps:

  • Read the REM changelog to understand the changes introduced in the uplevel software, any new configuration required, and any workarounds/limitations you may encounter (or in the case of upgrades to plugins, the appropriate changelogs for those plugins)

  • Obtain the upgrade package from your Metaswitch Customer Care Representative

  • Prepare for the upgrade

    • plan a maintenance window

    • identify the first host to be upgraded

  • Upgrade the first REM host

  • Check the connection from this REM host to the Rhino cluster

  • Upgrade the remainder of the REM hosts

  • Check the connections from these hosts to the Rhino cluster

The uplevel software is provided in the form of a bundle (zip file). The procedure of upgrading the software is performed using the orca tool, which is included in the bundle. Run orca from a machine (either an operator’s PC or a host in the deployment to be upgraded) that meets the following requirements:

  • Linux OS, with Python 2.7 installed and accessible in the PATH as python2 (you can check by running python2 --version)

  • At least 200 megabytes of free hard disk space (you can check with df -h)

  • Passwordless SSH connectivity (via SSH keys) to all REM hosts to be upgraded

    • Configure the SSH agent to log in as the user under which REM is installed on the hosts, normally sentinel. This can be configured in ~/.ssh/config in the home directory of the user that will be running orca, for example:

Host remhost1
  User sentinel
  IdentityFile /path/to/ssh_private_key
  ...

Upgrading will take approximately 2 minutes for each REM host, not including validation tests. It is a current limitation that the upgrade proceeds sequentially across all REM hosts.

Next steps

To plan your upgrade, see Preparing for a REM Upgrade.

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