SRDF SRA Upgrade

Our SRDF SRA version 10 has been out for some time now which means more customers are beginning to think about upgrading their 9.2 environment. Version 10 supports all the configurations that 9.2 does (you can compare release notes), along with more recent releases of both PowerMax and SRM. This is enabled by the backward compatibility of Solutions Enabler (SYMAPI).

The upgrade process is not difficult and is included in the release notes:

Despite the five easy steps, customers naturally gravitate to the fear inducing words like “Reset” and “Delete”. The question I get most concerning upgrades, therefore, is do I have to reset or delete all my existing objects to upgrade, that is array managers, protection groups, and recovery plans. The simple answer is no. But let’s run through an upgrade to show why.

Upgrade Steps

I’ll run through each of the steps here in my lab environment so you’ll know what to expect. Since I don’t have any arrays that work with the 9.2 SRDF SRA version, I am going to upgrade to a patched version of 10.0. As long as the version is different, the process of upgrading from 9 to 10 or 10 to 10.x is the same.

Prior to upgrading the SRA, you need to upgrade your Solutions Enabler environments (remote array managers). Remember that since SRM is expecting those IPs, if you change your IPs or hostnames you will break the array pairs.

Environment

Here is my existing environment. I have one enabled and one disabled array pair for PowerMax, and one protection group and one recovery plan:

After the upgrade completes, all these should be untouched.

Step 1

Upload the new SRDF SRA. Navigate to the SRM appliance management screen at port 5480, or just navigate to the appliance FQDN and then choose the management option. Select Storage Replication Adapters from the menu and then NEW ADAPTER.

Select and upload the new adapter. In my example here, I have the GA installed above, 10.0.0.0, and I am uploading a patched version 10.0.1.0.

When finished I now have two adapters:

Step 2

Next, we want to copy the configuration information from the current SRA to the new one. This will bring over all the Solutions Enabler files, authorization file, and the hostname file that ensures proper connectivity to the remote Solutions Enabler setup. Click on the three dots in the corner of the old adapter (for you 9.2) and select Copy Configuration.

Another dialog box pops-up, asking which SRA to copy it to. If you only have the SRDF SRA installed, it’s going to default to the new SRA 10. Here you see it defaults to my patched version of 10. Then select COPY. It will complete in a couple seconds.

Step 3

Step 3 requires that we remove the old SRA. We don’t support running two different versions of the SRA at once, so we need to delete the old one. As part of the removal process, we first reset it which removes the mounted docker volume, and then we delete it.

Use the three buttons again on the old SRA and select Reset configuration.

Once again this will take seconds. When complete, use the three buttons again to select Delete.

In order to delete the adapter, however, you will be asked to acknowledge that once deleted, you can’t recover any VMs. Although disconcerting, the reality is SRM does not know you are upgrading, it just knows you are removing the old adapter. Check the boxes and select DELETE.

Step 4

Even though we copied the configuration files over, you need to now run the enableAutoSSLCertGen.sh script. Copy the script from the downloaded SRA 10 zip to each SRM appliance. You run this script as root. If you aren’t upgrading from the bug fix version of 9.2, then you may be unaware that the syntax of running the script has changed. See my post on SRA 10 if you need to read about that.

Step 5

The final documented step is to run a rescan of each adapter. This is done in the regular SRM GUI. Navigate to the Storage Replication Adapters and select RESCAN ADAPTERS. Make sure you do this on both sites so that when complete, the Status has the green checkmark as mine does below.

Result

When you finish, you will see your existing setup. Note mine below with the new SRA version automatically picked up and my protection group.

 

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