I’ve been doing some work with Rubrik in our lab and thought it worth covering some of the basic features that I think are pretty neat. In this edition of Rubrik Basics, I thought I’d quickly cover off software upgrades. There are two ways to upgrade the Rubrik software on your Brik – via USB and SFTP. Either way, you’ll need access to the Downloads section of the support site. If you’re a customer, you’ll have this already. If this all sounds too hard, you can raise a ticket with the support team and they’ll tunnel in and do the upgrade for you (assuming you’ve allowed remote tunnel capability).
USB
The good thing about using a USB drive is that you can still keep appliances in “dark” sites up to date. Before you begin you’ll need to do two things:
- Download the compressed upgrade archive and the matching signature file from the customer portal.
- Format a removable drive with the FAT32 file system.
You’ll need to copy the upgrade file and matching signature file to the removable drive. Plug that into any node in the cluster. Log in to that node as the admin user. Mount the USB drive by typing the following command:
mount --usb_device
Type the following command to begin the upgrade:
upgrade start
The upgrade system scans the file system for upgrade archives. If multiple archives are available, it display a list of choices. Once you’ve finished, you can unmount the device.
umount --usb_device
SFTP
You can also run the upgrade via SFTP. I found the instructions on how to do that here. It’s not too dissimilar to the USB method. You’ll want to use your favourite SFTP client to upload the files to the /upgrade directory. Once you’ve done that, ssh on to the node and you can run a pre-flight check. If everything comes up Milhouse you’ll be good to go for the next step.
Using username "admin". [email protected]'s password: ======================= Welcome to Rubrik CLI ======================= Type 'help' or '?' to list commands RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade start --mode prechecks_only Do you want to use --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz [y/N] [N]: y Upgrade status: Started pre-checks successfully RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade status Current upgrade mode: prechecks_only Current upgrade pre-checks node: RVM165Sxxxx55 Current upgrade pre-checks tarball name: --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz Current upgrade pre-checks status: In progress Current run started at: 2018-07-19 00:48:04.437000 UTC+0000 Current state (3/6): VERIFYING Current task: Verify authenticity of new software Current state progress: 0.0% Finished states (2/6): ACQUIRING, COPYING Pending states (3/6): UNTARING, DEPLOYING, PRECHECKING Time taken so far: 18.38 seconds Overall upgrade progress: 6.0%
To check on progress, run “upgrade status” to, erm, check on the status of the upgrade.
RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade status Last upgrade mode: prechecks_only Last upgrade pre-checks node: RVM165Sxxxx55 Last upgrade pre-checks tarball name: --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz Last upgrade pre-checks status: Completed successfully Last run ended at: 2018-07-19 00:51:03.129000 UTC+0000 Current state: IDLE
Now you’re ready to do it for real. Run “upgrade start” to start.
RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade start Do you want to use --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz [y/N] [N]: y Upgrade status: Started upgrade successfully RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade status Current upgrade mode: normal Current upgrade node: RVM165Sxxxx55 Current upgrade tarball name: --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz Current upgrade status: In progress Current run started at: 2018-07-19 00:52:56.882000 UTC+0000 Current state (4/9): UNTARING Current task: Extract new software Current state progress: 0.0% Finished states (3/9): ACQUIRING, COPYING, VERIFYING Pending states (5/9): DEPLOYING, PRECHECKING, PREPARING, UPGRADING, RESTARTING Time taken so far: 22.52 seconds Overall upgrade progress: 3.5%
It’s a pretty quick process, and eventually you’ll see this message.
RVM165Sxxxx55 >> upgrade status Last upgrade mode: normal Last upgrade node: RVM165Sxxxx55 Last upgrade tarball name: --share rubrik-4.1.2-2366.tar.gz Last upgrade status: Completed successfully Last run ended at: 2018-07-19 01:19:09.719000 UTC+0000 Current state: IDLE RVM165Sxxxx55 >>
And you’re all done. Note that you only have to upload the data and run the process on one node in the cluster.
dont forget to umount the USB stick and/or disconnect SFTP before upgrading. otherwise it might break upgrade. thanks.
That’s a good point – thanks Eric!