Preparing for a Software Upgrade

Before you upgrade the software, perform the following actions for standalone or clustered controllers.

During the update process, some protocols may experience an outage. See related topics for more information.

1. Verify your current software version.

   • In the BUI, go to Maintenance > System.

   • In the CLI, go to maintenance system updates and enter show.

2. Remove extraneous system updates. See Removing System Updates BUI, CLI.

3. Check the most recent release notes for additional preconditions that should be observed for the software release. If skipping some software releases, also review the release notes from all applicable previous releases. See My Oracle Support document Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance: Software Updates (2021771.1).

4. Disable non-critical data services. These services may include replication, NDMP, shadow migration, or others. Disabling these services can shorten the upgrade time, and ensures that the system has a minimal operation load during the update. See Disabling a Service BUI, CLI.

5. Create a backup copy of the management configuration to minimize downtime in the event of an unforeseen failure. See Creating a Configuration Backup BUI, CLI.

6. Ensure that any resilvering and scrub operations have completed.

   • In the BUI, go to Configuration > Storage and check the STATUS column next to each pool.

   • In the CLI, go to configuration storage, enter set pool= and the name of the pool you want to check, and then enter show.

     The scrub property indicates whether scrub or resilver operations are active or completed.

7. Ensure that there are no active problems.

   • In the BUI, go to Maintenance > Problems.

   • In the CLI, go to maintenance problems show.

   For more information, see Active Problems Display.

8. Perform a health check. See Checking System Health BUI, CLI.

   A health check is automatically run as part of the update process, but should also be run independently to check storage health prior to entering a maintenance window.

9. Schedule a maintenance window of at least one hour to allow for disruptions in storage performance and availability during update.

Next Steps

• Upgrading Software on a Standalone Controller

  or

• Upgrading Software on Clustered Controllers

Related Topics

• White paper "Best Practices for Upgrading Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance," located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-unified-storage/documentation/index.html.