Updating

You can update your Storwize® V7000 Unified system environment by following procedures for updating automatically or manually.

These procedures apply to updating Storwize V7000 Unified version 1.3.0 or later. The amount of time for a software update can vary depending on the amount of preparation work required and the size of the environment. Generally allow six to eight hours for an update.

You can update only a Storwize V7000 Unified version 1.5.0 or later to version 1.6. If you need to update a Storwize V7000 Unified version that is prior to 1.5.0 to 1.6, you need to first update the system to 1.5.x and then to 1.6.

If you are updating a Storwize V7000 Unified version that is prior to 1.5.0, you must migrate ACLs from version 1.4.x to 1.5.x after updating the Storwize V7000 Unified version to 1.5.x. For more information, see Upgrading ACL from V 1.4.x to 1.5.x.

Software updates can be performed concurrently with the following methods of host access:
  • Block I/O access:
    • Fibre Channel
    • iSCSI
  • File I/O access:
    • Network File System (NFS) using hard mounts

Host systems using Common Internet File System (CIFS), Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Secure Copy Protocol (SCP), or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for file I/O access might experience brief interruptions during the update process and subsequently need to reconnect after the update has completed. It is recommended that any applications accessing file shares using these protocols be quiesced before starting a software update.

Do not perform an update during a busy or important timeframe. It is not possible to begin a new update if an existing software update is in progress.

Attention:
  • Do not remove power from the system during the update process. In the event of an unexpected power loss, nodes may not automatically initialize and the update may not complete. In this event, please contact IBM support to repair the system.
  • During the update process, you might lose access with the system management interface. If you are using the management GUI to manage your system, this results in a prompt to log in again. If you are using the command-line interface (CLI), this results in a termination of the current session.
  • Ensure that no asynchronous replication, TSM backup or restore, bulk scan, or NDMP tasks are scheduled to run during the update.
  • Do not start or stop asynchronous replication, start or stop Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) backup or restore, start or stop bulk scans, start or stop Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP), or make configuration changes during the update.
  • If you have a TSM backup or restore running, use the stopbackup or stoprestore command to stop the process before attempting the update.
  • Do not run or set policies with hierarchical storage management (HSM) during the update.
  • Do not run the startmgtsrv command during the update unless you are using update recovery procedures.
  • If the Storwize V7000 system on which the Storwize V7000 Unified is enabled contains 10 Gbps Ethernet adapters, and is being upgraded from a release version prior to 6.4.0 to 6.4.0 or above, then the Storwize V7000 update process shows an alert event. Each node canister logs the Detected hardware needs activation alert event with error code 1199. The fix procedure enables the FCoE hardware, which involves reboot of each node canister. Storwize V7000 Unified Wait until multipathing has recovered after each dump to avoid losing access. The Storwize V7000 Unified update might need restarting.
  • During the update, alerts and warning messages are displayed. These are side effects of the update process and may not be related to an actual problem. These alerts and warning messages disappear after the update completes and the overall status in the GUI switches to red.

Before performing an update, you should ensure that all of your hosts that run block I/O have multipathing software.