By Trilio Content Team | October 3, 2022
For businesses that have successfully navigated the hurdle of executing their first OpenStack cloud implementation, the complexity of moving to newer OpenStack releases can come as a shock. Without the right level of operational expertise, upgrading OpenStack can easily become a daunting challenge.
Why should you consider upgrading your OpenStack clouds?
There are many reasons to upgrade your OpenStack clouds as it brings numerous benefits that can greatly enhance the performance and security of your cloud infrastructure. Let’s delve into some advantages of performing an upgrade:
- Security and privacy features: When you upgrade your OpenStack clouds you ensure that you have access to the security patches and updates. This helps to keep your infrastructure protected against emerging threats. Furthermore, upgraded clouds often offer improved privacy controls, which instill confidence when handling data.
- System compatibility and optimized performance: With each upgrade, OpenStack introduces advancements in system compatibility making it easier for you to seamlessly integrate your cloud infrastructure with technologies. Upgrading also brings performance optimizations allowing for processing capabilities and more efficient resource utilization.
- Streamlined. Control, through automation and orchestration: Upgrading your OpenStack clouds empowers you to leverage automation and orchestration capabilities simplifying tasks while reducing efforts. By automating processes greater efficiency can be achieved, leading to an overall management experience.
Upgrading your OpenStack clouds can bring these advantages and more enabling you to optimize the functionality of your cloud infrastructure while enhancing its reliability.
Preparing for an Upgrade
Before you dive into upgrading your OpenStack clouds it’s important to take steps to ensure a transition. Here are some key factors to consider:
Evaluating the version of your OpenStack cloud and its compatibility, with the release
First and foremost it’s crucial to assess the current version of your OpenStack cloud. This will help determine if an upgrade is necessary and if your existing setup is compatible with the release. By identifying any gaps between your configuration and the desired version you can plan the upgrade accordingly.
Identifying risks and necessary resources for the upgrade process
Upgrade processes can come with risks, such as compatibility issues, data loss, or service disruptions. It’s important to identify these risks so that they can be minimized during the upgrade. Additionally make sure you have all the required resources in terms of hardware, software, and skilled personnel to support the upgrade process.
Backing up data and ensuring there are plans in place, for data migration
Before proceeding with the upgrade it’s vital to back up all data associated with your OpenStack cloud. This precautionary measure will safeguard your information in case any unexpected issues arise during the upgrade process.
Having a data migration strategy in addition, Trilio plays a crucial role in data backup and helps ensure a seamless transition from the current version to the upgraded one. By following these guidelines, you can effectively prepare for an OpenStack cloud upgrade, minimizing potential issues and ensuring a smooth transition to the most recent release with Trilio’s data protection capabilities.
Upgrading vs. Updating OpenStack
There is a distinction between upgrading and updating OpenStack. Updating involves the application of fixes for bugs and security vulnerabilities to OpenStack components and their underlying OS (operating system). An upgrade is concerned with migrating to a newer, more stable OpenStack release.
How to Upgrade an OpenStack Deployment
The task of upgrading an OpenStack deployment is challenging for a number of reasons. The OpenStack cloud consists of several distributed software components that work collaboratively to deliver the required services. All these disparate software components, including OS dependencies, must be concurrently upgraded.
Each OpenStack release comes with new features and may require a new hardware configuration. A company may have to allocate more memory and disk space and add or upgrade CPUs.
Simplify your OpenStack update with native workload recovery.
Upgrading Existing Dependencies
Although an OpenStack release will introduce new system dependencies, existing ones must be upgraded. Otherwise, the OpenStack service will either terminate with runtime failure or fail to start.
Remember to upgrade existing dependencies alongside the OpenStack services. All OpenStack components should be installed from packages with tested and correctly defined dependencies.
Unclean Shutdown
Upgrading OpenStack entails shutting down each OpenStack service and leaving enough time for them to complete active requests. In addition, it’s advisable to notify the message queue of the services’ unavailability before commencing an upgrade.
Once a service completes all received requests, it should notify the message queue to quit sending new requests.
Upgrading Services in Order
You may break the cloud if you upgrade OpenStack services in the wrong order. Here is a reasonable way to perform upgrades on your controllers:
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- MariaDB
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- MongoDBIdentity (keystone)
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- Image service (glance)
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- Block Storage (cinder)
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- Orchestration (heat)
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- Telemetry (ceilometer)
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- Compute (nova)
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- Networking (neutron)
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- Dashboard (horizon)
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- Fix Apache Configuration
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- Fix Dashboard Configuration
Removed or Deprecated Features, APIs, and Plugins
If there are other software or custom scripts using OpenStack API, the upgrade may fail. This is because each release introduces new API versions and deprecates or removes old APIs. The same goes for vendor-specific plugins and specific architectural features of your existing OpenStack deployment.
Thoroughly read through the release notes to identify any such changes and possible remedial action.
Steps for Success in an OpenStack Upgrade
Release of an OpenStack upgrade can be a challenging task. It requires the right approach, careful planning, and precise execution to minimize downtime in the cloud environment. Because of the complexity and headaches involved, cloud operators prefer to skip one or more releases before doing an upgrade.
There are several key steps to ensure the success of a planned OpenStack upgrade:
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- Going through the OpenStack release notes to identify potential incompatibilities between your existing deployment and the upgraded release.
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- Determine the maximum acceptable downtime and notify users about possible service interruptions.
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- Back up all data, especially databases and configuration files.
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- Plan for rolling back a failed upgrade.
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- Verify that the upgrade will work by testing in a test cloud with the same automation scripts used to deploy the production cloud.
Managing Upgraded OpenStack Clouds
Once you’ve successfully upgraded your OpenStack Clouds it becomes imperative to ensure the management of the enhanced infrastructure. Here are a few important factors to take into consideration:
The Significance of Continuous Monitoring and Performance Optimization post upgrade
Monitoring your upgraded OpenStack Clouds is vital, in order to identify and resolve any performance or stability issues that may arise. By implementing a monitoring system you can closely monitor resource utilization, network traffic, and service performance. Analyzing these metrics allows for the detection of bottlenecks enabling you to optimize your infrastructure
Utilizing Automation and Orchestration Tools for Efficient Management
To streamline the management process of your upgraded OpenStack Clouds leveraging automation and orchestration tools can significantly improve efficiency. These tools automate repetitive tasks such as resource provisioning, application scaling, and workload deployment management. By reducing efforts involved in these tasks you can focus on initiatives while ensuring smoother day-to-day operations.
Establishing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Consistent Performance and Availability
Post upgrade it is essential to establish service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure performance and availability of your cloud infrastructure. SLAs define the quality of service provided to users including response times, uptime guarantees, and support availability.
By establishing guidelines and adhering to service level agreements (SLAs) you can guarantee customer contentment. Uphold a dependable cloud infrastructure.
Troubleshooting Common Issues Encountered during OpenStack Cloud Upgrades
When upgrading OpenStack clouds it’s inevitable that you may come across challenges and problems. To help you navigate through these obstacles smoothly we’ve compiled a list of issues that arise during OpenStack cloud upgrades and effective techniques to troubleshoot and resolve them.
Compatibility Challenges
One of the challenges faced during an upgrade is dealing with compatibility issues, between different versions of OpenStack components. Sometimes certain features or functionalities don’t align correctly during the transition. To overcome this hurdle it’s essential to evaluate the compatibility matrix provided by the OpenStack community. Make sure that all components, plugins, and services are supported and compatible with the target version before proceeding with the upgrade.
Performance Bottlenecks
During an OpenStack cloud upgrade, there’s a possibility of introducing performance bottlenecks that can affect system efficiency. This could be due to factors such as increased resource requirements for upgraded components or misconfigurations in the upgrade process. To troubleshoot performance issues, analyze and monitor system metrics to identify bottlenecks. Scaling resources, optimizing configurations, or adjusting performance parameters can help address these challenges.
Bug Related Issues
It’s not uncommon to encounter bugs or problems within OpenStack components while performing an upgrade.
These software glitches can lead to issues, risks, security, or even crashes in the system. To resolve these problems related to bugs it’s important to examine error messages, logs, and diagnostic information. Working together with the OpenStack community seeking assistance from forums and collaborating with developers can help find solutions or workarounds to fix these bugs.
In general resolving challenges during an upgrade requires a combination of know-how thorough analysis and effective communication with the OpenStack community. By following recommended practices and utilizing these troubleshooting techniques you can ensure a successful upgrade of your OpenStack cloud.
The end of the “Big Tent” approach
To help resolve the challenges of upgrading to a new release, the OpenStack community previously took a “Big Tent” approach for new releases. With this model, cloud operators were able to select preferred components and incrementally upgrade modules with near-zero downtime. However, the OpenStack community is ditching this approach in favor of modularization and stand-alone services, as evidenced in the OpenStack Keystone release.
How Trilio Can Help
TrilioVault’s agentless, software-only solution can help enterprises upgrade their OpenStack environment by backing up the entirety of the old one (including all that valuable metadata, such as configurations) and restoring it to the new, updated one. Cloud admins can choose to reuse existing hardware or leverage new hardware (in-place vs. out-of-place upgrade).
Trilio is the only native OpenStack backup and recovery platform that gives administrators and tenants the ability to restore entire workloads in one click. Connect with a team member today to learn how Trilio can help resolve OpenStack upgrade challenges.
