Doubt about upgrade with Blink Package

[fjulianom]

Hi community,

I am going to upgrade my virtualized SMS from R80.40 to R81.10 with the Blink Package. Isn't as easy as right-click and click on Upgrade?

When I select the Blink Package and click on Verify Update I get the message "Upgrade is allowed". I read the article sk120193, and according to section Blink image installation > Using Blink with CPUSE (Clean Install / Upgrade), it is as commented before. But section How to use the Blink mechanism talks about creating new directories, executing permission to the Blink utility, executing the Blink utility, and so on.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Julián

 

[PhoneBoy · Accepted solution]

The section in sk120193 you're referring to applies when using the blink command in Expert mode to install an image.
When using the CPUSE Blink images via clish/Gaia WebUI, this doesn't apply.

[fjulianom]

OK, thanks for the confirmation.

Regards,

Julian

[the_rock]

@PhoneBoy is correct, I would not worry about it, as thats related to command line, not CPUSE. The only thing you have to worry when in CPUSE is whether it gives you any warnings/error when verifying if install/upgrade is allowed. Generally, I personally always recommend at least 20 GB free in / dir and 30 GB free in /var/log at minimum. Better be safe than sorry, right? : - )

[RamGuy239]

On R80.40+, upgrading using CPUSE (R81.10 Gaia Fresh Install and upgrade) and Blink (R81.10 Security Management + JHF T79 for Appliances and Open Servers) is basically the same thing using the same kind of logic.

There is no reason not to opt for Blink anymore, as the underlying logic for the upgrade process is the same. When choosing blink, you get the added benefit of choosing a package which already includes the latest recommended jumbo hotfix applied. When using the CPUSE package, you will be limited to R81.10 GA only, and you will have to manually apply the latest recommended jumbo hotfix package after the upgrade.

[RamGuy239]

One thing to be aware of is that R80.20 for management installations introduced the XFS filesystem, which is heavily recommended for management installations. The only way to get this new filesystem is by doing a clean installation. I'm not sure how you did your R80.40 installation, but I would recommend you to run "df -hT" via SSH to verify if you have XFS already or not:

[Expert@fwlog01:0]# df -T
Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_splat-lv_current xfs 26201600 8528584 17673016 33% /
/dev/sda2 ext3 297485 27115 255010 10% /boot
/dev/sda1 vfat 61302 7348 53954 12% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/vg_splat-lv_log xfs 36684800 1993744 34691056 6% /var/log
tmpfs tmpfs 8089272 3876 8085396 1% /dev/shm
cgroup tmpfs 8089272 0 8089272 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

If you don't have the XFS filesystem already, I would recommend you to install R81.10 on a new host and migrate your installation to the new host instead of doing an in-place upgrade.

[fjulianom]

Hi @RamGuy239,

I will run the SSH command to see if the installation has XFS filesystem. If not, do you mean it is not recommended to have a R81.10 SMS without XFS filesystem? If so, what are the downsides?

Regards,

 Julian 

[PhoneBoy]

The downside will be performance (mainly XFS shows a noticeable improvement for disk-intensive management tasks). 

[the_rock]

I find using blink image for upgrade used to be faster, but last time I did it with customer for R80.40 to R81.10 upgrade, did not find it was significantly better than few times I did it before then.

[fjulianom]

Then I see upgrading using blink packages is better than using major versions, since it is basically the same thing but also includes the jumbo hot fixes.

Regards,

 Julian