[Lustre-discuss] Lustre 1.6.6 to 1.8.3 upgrade + MDT hardware migration

[Greg Mason]

> 
> Any significant motivation for sticking with SLES10 instead of RHEL 5 for the MGS?

Our MGS sits in a VMware stack, and I imagine it would be easier to simply install the 1.8.3 RPMs and mount up the MGS rather than make the switch to RHEL. Would it be recommended to stick with RHEL across the board for all Lustre servers?
> 
> What is the motivation for not upgrading the OSTs at the same time?  I don't think it will significantly increase the outage window, and you will be running code that has been tested together a lot more.
The motivation was reducing the downtime, and potential for problems. It sounds like the best way to prevent complications is to upgrade everything all at once...
> 
> If you are just doing a block-device copy of the MDT filesystem from the old disks to the new disks, then the hardware replacement itself should not require a writeconf.  However, it may be that the 1.6->1.8 upgrade needs a writeconf (I admit I don't know the answer to this offhand).
I'm doing file-level (tar and getfattr) backup and restore, as I'm taking advantage of the larger MDT filesystem to create more inodes in the process.
> 
> You can leave it mounted on all the clients during the upgrade.  They will hang if they access the filesystem, waiting for the servers to return.  If the MDS and MGS are not changing IP addresses then no problems should be anticipated.

This is good to hear, and will greatly simplify things.

Thanks for the info Andreas.


--
Greg Mason
System Administrator
Michigan State University
High Performance Computing Center

web: www.hpcc.msu.edu
email: gmason at msu.edu




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