Learn how to upgrade your Dell PowerFlex environment from version 3.6.2 to 4.5 with this comprehensive, step-by-step guide. This video walks you through the entire upgrade process, including importing existing management clusters, updating compliance catalogs, and upgrading SDS, HCI, and SO resource groups. Ideal for IT professionals familiar with PowerFlex operations, this guide ensures a smooth and compliant upgrade. For advanced procedures or troubleshooting, please contact Dell Technical Support.
🔧 Topics Covered:
Preparing for the upgrade
Importing existing PowerFlex environments
Updating compliance files and catalogs
Upgrading management and workload clusters
Ensuring post-upgrade compliance
📌 Note: This video is for illustrative purposes only. Always back up your environment before performing upgrades.
In this video, we will demonstrate the steps necessary to upgrade a PowerFlex environment from PowerFlex 3.6.2 to PowerFlex 4.5. Before we begin the PowerFlex upgrade, this video is for illustrative purposes only. Many parts of it have been accelerated to fit the time allotted. It assumes that a new PowerFlex 4.5 management platform (PFMP) has already been deployed in the environment. Deploying a new PFMP is beyond the scope of this video. This video assumes the necessary RCM packages have been downloaded from a Dell Digital Locker. The video also assumes familiarity with basic PowerFlex management operations.
As with any maintenance operations, users are strongly encouraged to create a backup of their existing environment prior to attempting an upgrade. Advanced upgrade procedures are not covered in this video and should be directed to Dell technical support. Please contact your Dell Technical Support representative for questions about the upgrade procedure. With that, let's get started. We start by logging into the new PowerFlex 4.5 environment. The initial configuration wizard will help us get started quickly. Proceed to the installation Type screen and select "I have a PowerFlex instance managed by PowerFlex Manager to import". Provide the details to connecting to the existing PowerFlex instance that you want to upgrade from. Then click next.
The new PowerFlex Manager will validate the environment to be imported. It will then ask you to select the existing PowerFlex Management cluster to import. Note: the wizard only supports importing a single management cluster. Review the summary and click finish to begin the import process of the existing PowerFlex Management environment. You will then be prompted to confirm the import of the PowerFlex environment. Please wait for the migration operation to complete. It may take a while to finish. From the PowerFlex Manager, click on settings in the top right corner. Under repositories, click Compliance versions. Click the add button to add a compliance file to the PowerFlex Manager. Select download from Local Network Path and complete the connection details. Click the test connection button. Once the test completes successfully, click save.
The import and synchronization may take some time to complete. Once the operation is completed, click the change button next to the default version. In the dropdown, select the new compliance file. Then type in the confirmation text and click the save button. Now click resources from the top menu. Once the resources screen loads, select all of the resources. Then click Run Inventory button. Now wait for the inventory operation to finish. Prior to performing any updates to the management cluster, VMware HA and VMware DRS should be disabled. To do this, log into the VMware vCenter. Select the management cluster. Click the configure tab and select vSphere DRS. In the top right corner of the screen, click the edit button. Toggle the vSphere DRS switch at the top left and then click okay.
To disable VMware HA, click on the vSphere availability item in the left menu. Then click the edit button at the top right of the page. Toggle vSphere HA and click okay. After disabling both VMware, HA and VMware DRS, return to the PowerFlex Manager. In the resource list, locate the PowerFlex MDS. Click non-compliant next to the name. Click the Update Resource button to start the Update Resource Wizard. Select all three nodes that make up the PowerFlex Gateway. Select the desired maintenance mode. In this instance, we will be using Instant Maintenance mode. Enter the Confirm update text and click finish.
When prompted, confirm the changes by clicking Yes. To view the job progress, click monitor on the top right of the menu bar, then click on the view progress for the firmware update device job. Wait for the update to complete. You can see that it is completed in the recent activity on the job. In the resources screen we can also see that the update was successful as it shows the PowerFlex MDS as compliant. VMware HA VMware DRS may now be re-enabled in the management cluster. To do this, login to the vCenter. Select the management cluster. Click on the configure tab in the top menu and then select Feature Availability. Click the edit button in the top right and toggle vSphere HA on.
Then click okay to enable VMware DRS click vSphere DRS under services. Click the edit button. Toggle the vSphere DRS switch and click okay. PowerFlex is able to update an associated VMware vCenter as part of the upgrade process. From the resources screen, click the non-compliant link for the vCenter. Click the vCenter software version. Then click the Update Resource button. This will start the update process for the vCenter. For this upgrade we have opted to defer the update until a later time. This completes the prerequisite tasks for upgrading a PowerFlex cluster. In part two, we will upgrade a workload cluster. We'll start on the resources screen in PowerFlex Manager. Then we will select the PowerFlex system from the list of resources, and click the Run Inventory button at the top left of the screen. Once the inventory is done, click non-compliant next to the PowerFlex system. Make sure the PowerFlex Gateway is highlighted and then click the update resource. But on the Update Resources screen.
Select all of the SDS nodes in the list. Then scroll down and click the next button. Review the nodes to be updated. They may span multiple screens. Once satisfied, enter the confirmation text. Click the finish button. Then click yes to confirm the upgrade. To view the job progress. Click the jobs icon in the top right corner of the screen. Wait for the update to complete. You can see that it is completed in the recent activity on the job. In the resources screen. We can also see that the update was successful as it shows the PowerFlex Gateway as compliant. Now we will re inventory the environment by selecting all the resources and clicking Run Inventory. Several of the nodes will change to non-compliant. Click non-compliant for details. The compliance report loads and displays the non-compliant items. Click the close button. The reason the node show is non-compliant is that the resource group is using an older compliance catalog. Let's update the catalog. From the lifecycle menu, select Resource Groups. We will start with the Management Resource Group by clicking on the groups name. We will then click on the non-compliant link on the right of the screen. The node Compliance report is displayed. It shows the service catalog is 3.6.5.0. Click the change button.
This allows you to change the compliance file from the dropdown. Select the desired compliance file, enter the confirmation text and click the save button. After a few moments, the catalog changes. We will now apply the updated catalog to our resource group. To do so, click the non-compliant link in the top right of the screen. Select the nodes that are non-compliant. Then click the Update Resources button. Select the appropriate maintenance mode and click the Apply button. Confirm and wait for the updates to complete. We can see the nodes as ESXi host being upgraded in the vCenter as well. We will now wait for the upgrades to finish. This can take a while and will vary depending on the number of nodes being updated. These same steps can be applied to other resource groups to bring them into compliance. Note that the update activity completed successfully. We see that some portions of the resource group show as non-compliant. If we look at a node compliance report, we see that one of the items is the vCenter. If we look at the nodes, we will see that they are now compliant. The other item that is not compliant is the Dell S4148 switch. If we look at the software components, we can see that they are compliant with the service catalog.
This completes the upgrade of workload and management clusters. We will start in the resource groups which is accessible from the lifecycle menu. We will start by working with the storage only or SO resource group. We can open the resource group by clicking on its name. If we scroll down, we can see that physical nodes for the resource group show as non-compliant. We can click on non-compliant in the resource Group information box at the top of the page. From the Node Compliance report, we will select the storage nodes from the list. We can also look at the software components. At which point we click the Update Resource button in the lower right corner. We then review the update settings, selecting the appropriate maintenance mode operations. Then we click on the Apply button, we confirm that we wish to upgrade the storage nodes by clicking yes. We then wait for the update to finish, noting that the update may take up to two hours per node to complete.
The recent activity will show that the update job completed successfully. When the upgrade is finished, click on Resource Groups at the top left of the screen. This shows the resource group as compliant. Now click on the resource Group name. From here we can see that the SO nodes show is compliant. Now we will update the HCI resource group in our VMware vCenter. We see an HCI cluster with four nodes 36 to 39. These are the nodes we will update in the PowerFlex manager. We click on the name of our HCI resource group. This will display the resource group details. When we scroll down we can see four nodes are non-compliant. If we scroll up and click non-compliant for the resource group on the right hand side of the screen, we can see the Node Compliance report. From the report, select the HCI nodes to be updated. Then click Update Resources. Review how the resources will be updated.
In this case, we will select Instant Maintenance mode and click the apply button. At this point, we will wait for the update to complete. The recent activity shows that the updates completed successfully. Note that compute still shows as non-compliant. This is because, as we have shown earlier, the vCenter is non-compliant. To ensure the inventory is up to date, we will go to the resources menu. Select all resources and click the Run Inventory button. Again, we check the resource groups under the Lifecycle menu. When we look at the HCI resource group, we see that the state is unchanged. This concludes upgrading an environment from PowerFlex 3.6 to 4.5. You can visit Dell.com to learn more.
