This post examines three different elements of managing the lifecycle of VMware Data Services Manager, using the upgrade from DSM v1.3.2 to v1.4 as an example. The upgrade process involves upgrading the DSM provider, then the DSM agents, and finally the databases. It’s worth noting that upgrading from DSM v1.3.2 to v1.4 entails upgrading the supported versions of PostgreSQL and MySQL to a new minor version. If the “Allow Minor Version Upgrade” feature is enabled, the databases are automatically updated during the next maintenance window. However, the provider administrator has the option to upgrade the databases on-the-fly if needed, which will be discussed further in this post.
Provider Upgrade
If a customer has connected their DSM deployment to the Tanzu Network, then once a new release or update becomes available from VMware, a notification is automatically displayed in the DSM UI. As the provider administrator, select the Update Manager view. If there is an update available, it will be listed under Available Updates. Below, we can see that there is an update to v1.4 available.
At this point, the Stage option can be selected to download the appropriate updates. Once the update has been staged, the status is set to Ready For Install and an Install operation can be initiated.
If the Provider is not configured in a highly available configuration, then it will be unavailable for the duration of a reboot operation. Once the reboot completes and all of the services are back online, the History view should show details of the Stage and Install operations.
The Provider has been successfully upgraded. It is now time to turn our attention to the Agents.
Agent Upgrade
To check to see if there is an Agent update available, the provider administrator navigates to the Environments view. This will show any available updates. To initiate an Agent update, simply click on the “Initiate Next Update” option in the top-right of the UI.
If the Agent has not yet detected that there is an update available, it may fail with “Feature is not available at agent”. To remedy this situation, simply login to the Agent VM and restart the update service using the command:
# systemctl restart update-manager.service
After a few moments, the agent status should enter “Maintenance Mode”, indicative of the fact that the upgrade is underway. The Agent will not be online during this process. The Agent should reboot and once the update is complete, should return to an Online state. Repeat this process for all agents.
The agent is now upgraded. We can next turn our attention to the databases.
Database Upgrade
As stated earlier, upgrading from DSM v1.3.2 to v1.4 involves updating the supported versions of PostgreSQL and MySQL to a new minor version. If the “Allow Minor Version Upgrade” option is activated, the databases will be automatically upgraded during the next maintenance window. However, the provider administrator can also choose to upgrade the databases immediately. Here’s how:
To initiate an immediate upgrade of the database, go to the database section in the DSM UI. Select the “Maintenance & Updates” view, where you’ll see that both the OS version and Engine version have updates available. The OS version is behind the Provider and Agent, while the Engine version indicates that a new version of PostgreSQL (13.9.0.1) is available. To start the update process, simply click the “Update Now” link. Note that the virtual machine hosting the database will reboot, making the database temporarily unavailable.
The alternate is to enable the Maintenance Policy for the database so that the database is automatically updated out of normal working hours. This can be done by clicking on the Edit button associated with the Maintenance Policy shown above, and enabling the Allow Minor Version Upgrade option.
That concludes this overview of lifecycle management in VMware Data Services Manager. Feel free to reach out with any questions. Thank you for reading.