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    suggestions for upgrade path XCP-ng 8.2.1 -> XCP-ng 8.3.0

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    • ditzy-oliveD Offline
      ditzy-olive
      last edited by

      Hi xcp-ng community,
      I've have a xcp-ng setup consisting out of a pool of two servers that are both running XCP-ng 8.2.1, yes yes, I know it's outdated and I should have upgraded. Don't judge please, it's been a rough year.
      Now I've finally made time to setup a third server so I can migrate and upgrade the others. This is where my problems started, I can't add the new xcp-ng running 8.3.0 to the existing pool.
      I'm getting an error "message": "The hosts are not compatible",
      Which I assume is based on the fact that they are running different xcp-ng versions.

      I was thinking of two paths out of this mess.

      1. Reinstall the new server with 8.2.1, adding it to the pool then migrate VMs and start upgrading.
      2. Upgrade the existing servers then add the new one to the pool.

      The 2nd option sounds like the more reasonable idea but it just feels scary to install an iso over an existing system.

      Was just hoping to be able to move the VM off to the new server and start a rolling upgrade but since I can't add it to the pool it seems that I have to take the risk.

      Any suggestions how I could do this better? Or what to pay attention to?

      Thanks

      A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • A Offline
        Andrew Top contributor @ditzy-olive
        last edited by

        @ditzy-olive You can not join a new XCP 8.3 host to an existing 8.2 pool.

        You can setup your new host as 8.2 and join it to the 8.2 pool and then upgrade everything to 8.3 using the correct procedure.... Or as you stated. Add the new 8.3 host to the upgraded 8.3 pool.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • N Offline
          normanghenderson
          last edited by

          I've just been through this loop. You can't even migrate halted VMs cross-pool from 8.3 to 8.2.1, although it's possible the other way around.

          I decided to install 8.2.1 on the new server (which isn't scary if its a new server, not doing anything ...)
          I then joined it to the pool and applied all outstanding 8.2.1 patches on all 3 servers, using the CLI because XO wasn't showing the patch status consistently: yum repolist (to make sure only xcp-ng-base and xcp-ng-updates are enabled); yum check-updates; yum updates on each system, pool master first.

          Then I made the new server pool master thinking it would be safer to upgrade the new, empty host first. For 8.3 the upgrade is done from the iso media (on a USB stick). The upgrade was smooth.

          I then ran into a glitch: I wasn't able to do certain operations on the pool because it was in mid-upgrade. I did live-migrate some vm's from old to new, but I shut one down hoping to reduce memory size so it would fit on the new server and it wouldn't let me reduce memory on the vm - "mid upgrade". And I wasn't able to start VMs on the old 8.2.1 pool members - "mid upgrade". Ended up shutting down all but a few essential vm's that had been live-migrated to the new server - leaving the two old servers empty.

          Next glitch: my USB stick is UEFI, the old hosts were Legacy BIOS. Changed the servers to UEFI and was able to boot the USB. However the installer said the existing system on disk couldn't be upgraded - perhaps because of the BIOS/UEFI issue, not sure.

          I ended up reducing the pool to the new server only and doing a clean install of 8.3 on both of the old servers. I lost all of the vm virtual disks on old servers "local storage", not a disaster, almost everything was on the shared storage pool but there were some VM's that could have been useful. And then of course I joined the two old servers to the pool again.
          Then there were 72 v.8.3 patches to apply to the 3 systems, from XO.

          I should have moved all the VMs around before starting the upgrade. Because I didn't do that, it took a lot more time than I expected and was nail-biting at times, but it ended well enough.

          ForzaF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ForzaF Offline
            Forza @normanghenderson
            last edited by

            This is what I did.

            • Migrated VMs off one host
            • Disconnected that host from the pool
            • Made a clean install of version 8.3 on that host and made into a new pool.
            • Live-migrated grated VMs back to the new pool
            • Made clean installs on the remaining hosts
            • Joined the remaining hosts to the new pool
            ditzy-oliveD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • ditzy-oliveD Offline
              ditzy-olive @Forza
              last edited by

              @Forza thanks. But as @normanghenderson a live migrate from 8.2 -> 8.3 didn't work for me either.
              I tried that approach first, made the 8.3 to a new pool but it delivered some XCP API Errors ... which thinking of it now might have been a firewall issue but I manually checked access between the systems and everything seemed fine.
              I now have everything running on 8.2. Have some non important VM on the new server that is 8.2 and will upgrade that one to 8.3 then see if I can migrate other VM away from the 8.2 systems.
              If that works, I'm all good. If not ... I will have to start over from scratch.

              But thanks everyone for the quick replies.

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