Choosing a Sun Cluster Upgrade Method

Choose from the following methods to upgrade your cluster to Sun Cluster 3.1 8/05 software:

• Nonrolling upgrade – In a nonrolling upgrade, you shut down the cluster before you upgrade the cluster nodes. You return the cluster to production after all nodes are fully upgraded. You must use the nonrolling-upgrade method if one or more of the following conditions apply:

  • You are upgrading from Sun Cluster 3.0 software.

  • You are upgrading from Solaris 8 software to Solaris 9 software or from Solaris 9 software to Solaris 10 10/05 software or compatible.

  • Any software products that you are upgrading, such as applications or databases, require that the same version of the software is running on all cluster nodes at the same time.

  • You are upgrading the Sun Cluster module software for Sun Management Center.

  • You are also upgrading VxVM or VxFS.

• Rolling upgrade – In a rolling upgrade, you upgrade one node of the cluster at a time. The cluster remains in production with services running on the other nodes. You can use the rolling-upgrade method only if all of the following conditions apply:

  • You are upgrading from Sun Cluster 3.1 software.

  • You are upgrading the Solaris operating system only to a Solaris update, if at all.

  • For any applications or databases you must upgrade, the current version of the software can coexist in a running cluster with the upgrade version of that software.

  If your cluster configuration meets the requirements to perform a rolling upgrade, you can still choose to perform a nonrolling upgrade instead. A nonrolling upgrade might be preferable to a rolling upgrade if you wanted to use the Cluster Control Panel to issue commands to all cluster nodes at the same time and you could tolerate the cluster downtime.

For overview information about planning your Sun Cluster 3.1 8/05 configuration, see Chapter 1, Planning the Sun Cluster Configuration.