Upgrading Avamar proxy after grid upgrade

RJHarris wrote: The key point being you have to delete the proxies from the Avamar gui and re-register so that only one proxy is in the gui and not 8. Also re-select all datastores. Add back to your policy groups. Richie

Richie,

your last paragraph applies to VM Proxy upgrades ?

so there are 2 different methods stated in the documentation.

on the Release notes it says you must deploy new

but the vm-ware notes say you can upgrade..........

excellent, thank you very much Richie.

Yes it does.

Richie

as we have high-jacked this thread on the merits of new or upgrade proxies..

let me see if I have a handle on the 7.1 proxies.

depending on which doc you read - you MUST deploy new 7.1 proxies   OR  you can upgrade

but if you upgrade

you need to make a change to a file on the grid that 'modifies' a 7.0 proxy to act like a 7.1 proxy.

but only do this if you NEVER plan on adding more proxies,

but if you do you must add 7.0 proxies  as you cannot mix new 7.1  with old 7.0

and you hope your coworkers know this

and everybody who might come behind you know this

or hope on the next upgrade they just deploy new to get rid of this whole confusion.

I guess it depends on how hard it is for you to make new ones.

If I got all this confusion right...I think I will stick with the plan of making new 7.1 proxies.

Yeah let me sum up hopefully this helps.

1. If you don't upgrade and leave proxies at 7.0

     a. you must change mcs parameter for proxy backup jobs to 1 instead of 8 since you still have 8 proxy sessions registered in the gui.

     b. you will miss out on new FLR and other fix features as mentioned in release notes that are new for 7.1.

2. If you upgrade your 7.0 proxies to 7.1

     a. you must delete them from the avamar gui

     b. you must re-register them

     c. you must re-add datastores

     d. you must re-add them to your policy groups.

3. If you want to deploy new 7.1 proxies

     a. delete old proxies form avamar gui

     b. delete old proxies from vCenter

     c. deploy new 7.1 proxy

     d. register new proxy

     e. add datastores

     f. add to policy groups

So yeah choose your own adventure really. I have done step 2 a few times and you do save a lot of time depending on the amount of proxies in your environment by not-redeploying. But proxycp can help with a lot of the steps, there is a deleteproxy option (remember to make sure no replication, backups are running and they have been cleared of their policy groups before doing so) So that can delete your proxies really quickly if you have a lot. Also there is a selectalldatastores option which will quickly add all your datastores back with out having to do it in the gui. For one and two proxies gui is fine but for 8+ proxies and multiple grids proxycp is a time saver for sure.

Richie

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong Richie, but J.H. my takeaway was that you:

1)Need to delete the streams from the Avamar GUI that get created for 7.0 proxies [[remember what datastores you have selected you will need to re-configure]]

(ie: Delete these from GUI

AvamarProxyP1-1

AvamarProxyP1-2

AvamarProxyP1-3

AvamarProxyP1-4

AvamarProxyP1-5

AvamarProxyP1-6

AvamarProxyP1-7

AvamarProxyP1-8

)

2)Then Upgrade the proxy from vCenter,

3)Then Re-Register the proxy with the Avamar Grid

4)Then Re-configure (datastores, groups)

I believe the setting/file you are referring to is when you have a mixed environment of 7.1 and 7.0 proxies.  If you have a mixed environment and don't modify that setting you could end up with just one of your 7.0 proxies kicking off up to 64 concurrent backups (8x8 streams) which could cause some serious performance issues.  Essentially that change makes your 7.1 proxies behave like one stream of a 7.0 proxy if I am following that documentation correctly.

If you upgrade or deploy all 7.1 proxies before backups kick off you shouldnt have to modify anything from what I gather.

Richie,

Thank you for all your provided information, very useful.

So, I am in the process of upgrading our nodes from 6.1 to 7.1 (we did our secondary node yesterday and it went flawless). Our primary node is scheduled in two weeks. Where my confusion lies is the proxies for 6.1. Can i simply upgrade these after our node is upgraded, by attaching the ISO to the proxy vm's and let the upgrade of these begin? Or do i need new proxies?

Next question, if i need new proxies can i simply power the old ones down (eventually deleting), use the same DNS names and IP's for the 7.1 proxies? If so, in the GUI do i then delete the proxies and re-add? I guess I'd have the same question if I am able to upgrade as well.

I'm fairly new to Avamar and I'm coming into a new environment so I appreciate all your information.

Dear Richie,

After upgrading to Amavar 7.1.1-141 from 7.0.1-161 and deploying new 7.1.1-141 proxies following procedure No.3, backup was not able to start with the following error:

"No Eligible Proxy"

I checked that the proxy is communicating, configured the datastores and selected the proxy in the group properties.

Is there anything else i can check?

you said that you selected "the proxy" sounding link one proxy

if that group only has one proxy it could be it was busy?

go to the Administration window and open the properties for the proxy and check the group tab there

I always pick all groups for all proxies...

and just double check you have all the datastores you need on each proxy.

Nevermind i deleted the proxy, re-deployed it and after registration, it works ok.

Thanks.

Hi Richie,

thank you very much for this much easier way to update the proxies. It worked perfectly for me   but I have a few questions:

1. Is there a flag that I can add to the command to update a specific proxy and not all. I got just a few of them that haven't got the update.

2. Is it normal that in the proxy's main screen and in VM's summary it remains showing the previous version althought Avamar Console shows new version?

I updated proxies from 7.1.100-370 to 7.1.101.145.

Thank you!!

Proxy Detail on Avamar Console

Proxy Main Screen

Proxy Summary on vSphere

just upgraded my proxies as well, same issue with version number on the console.

You can involve VM team to release the disk and perform the consolidation of that particular disk of VM.

Once this is done, reboot the proxy server and re-register/activate with avamar server if required.

After that try restarting the avamar vcenter connection and you should be able to see the datastores your proxy servers connected to and also vcenter group which has an issues.

After this try restarting the backups.