[SOLVED] Recommended upgrade procedure on HA (DRBD & Heartbeat)

[ekkas]

I have 2 Zimbra servers running in a remote datacentre, 1 (primary) on a physical server and 1 on a Virtual (Xen) server that replicates via DRBD and have HA with Heartbeat.

They are on 6.0.5_GA_2213.RHEL5_64_20100203001950 CentOS5_64 FOSS edition and I'd like to upgrade them to latest version.

It's easy to just upgrade the main server, but then if a failover happens, I think that the outdated secondary server will have problems?

I need some advice on upgrade procedures as this is a mission critical servers(s) and I cannot afford long downtimes... nor something that broke because of the upgrade.

Thanks in advance

Ekkas

PS: Can I just run a 'dummy' install on a temp /opt folder on the secondary using './install.sh -s' ? Then delete the dummy /opt?

[maxxer]

i found a blog post about that somewhere...

but in the end it's as you say.
iirc the post said you should upgrade the main zimbra, then failover to the backup and install -s there.
but I guess the dummy install will do the same, as all binaries should be in the shared disk

[Himanshu]

Originally Posted by ekkas

I have 2 Zimbra servers running in a remote datacentre, 1 (primary) on a physical server and 1 on a Virtual (Xen) server that replicates via DRBD and have HA with Heartbeat.

They are on 6.0.5_GA_2213.RHEL5_64_20100203001950 CentOS5_64 FOSS edition and I'd like to upgrade them to latest version.

It's easy to just upgrade the main server, but then if a failover happens, I think that the outdated secondary server will have problems?

I need some advice on upgrade procedures as this is a mission critical servers(s) and I cannot afford long downtimes... nor something that broke because of the upgrade.

Thanks in advance

Ekkas

PS: Can I just run a 'dummy' install on a temp /opt folder on the secondary using './install.sh -s' ? Then delete the dummy /opt?

So which Option You selected for the Upgrade ? & how was the experience..?

[ekkas]

I updated primary server, then shut it down (after sync complete) to make secondary the primary, then ran install again to upgrade secondary, then start up primary again, wait for sync to complete, make it primary.
No problems.

[Himanshu]

Originally Posted by ekkas

I updated primary server, then shut it down (after sync complete) to make secondary the primary, then ran install again to upgrade secondary, then start up primary again, wait for sync to complete, make it primary.
No problems.

Ok.

1.What was the option while running install script on secondary server?
Was it install -s ?
2. Was zimbra service up while install on secondary ?

[ekkas]

I did full install on both.
1) Disable zimbra on startup for secondary. (Zimbra not running unless it becomes primary, but tempiorarily disable it)
2) Upgrade primary.
3) Wait for DRBD sync to complete
4) Stop Zimbra on primary
5) Make secondary the new primary (zimbra still stopped)
6) While (old)Zimbra(packages) is NOT running on (old) secondary, install update.
7) Start up zimbra on either side(or both sides in turn) and test.
8) All should be ok.

I think most important is just to NOT start old binaries on updated Zimbra install. So when you do update, make sure other side Zimbra cannot start untill it is also updated.