Upgrading from 2.5 to 2.6

[herseyc]

Is there a guide for upgrading from App Volumes 2.5 to 2.6?

I don't see any information on upgrading in the users guide.  I am assuming you upgrade the App Volumes Manager and then the Agents.  Is there an in place upgrade or do you uninstall 2.5 and then install 2.6.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Hersey

[Ray_handels · Accepted solution]

Hey

You need to first uninstall the manager, then reinstall the manager without overwriting the database. Make sure that no users are logged in while doing this because the appstacks and writable volume will be detached without asking (and users don't like that ).

After that just change the VDI by uninstalling/rebooting and installing the new agent version. After that your good to go.

The upgrade process of Appvolumes is very easy and straighforward. Only thing to keep in mind is to NOT overwrite the existing database.

[JHT_Seattle]

THe detachment issue you mention - does this still happen when you have an LTM setup?  We have our agents configured with two managers and it was a surprise to me that the stacks were disconnected as I took one Manager down for updating. I'm not sure now how to update effectively without causing severe disruption in our environment. Hopefully that's being worked on for future versions...

[Ray_handels]

I agree with you on that one JHT.

Because we are still running test/POC/pilot environment we decided to create 2 different managers with 2 different databases. This way we could easily update the manager and agents. Offcourse this is not something we would like to have in production..

But in my understanding you will need to do the "big bang" update meaning first update the golden image with new agent, then put the environment in maintenance mode, update managers, then recompose environment with new agent and your good to go. And as you said, it would be nice to change this option. Either make sure you can do an in place upgrade or let us decide whether we would like to reconfigure all active machines. Sounds like a 3.0 feature to me

[JHT_Seattle]

Now that I'm rolling back to 2.5.2, at least something looks like it'll be easier (once we're on 2.6.0 and need to update to anything newer)... when uninstalling 2.6.0 it gives you the option of unattaching the stacks if it's your final uninstall, so if you're just uninstalling the Manager to prepare for an upgrade (or downgrade), leave the box unchecked and it leaves the stacks untouched, which won't result in frustrated users. If your Agent is pointed to multiple Managers or to an LTM, this should result in no service interruption as new users login or computers are started (however you have your stacks assigned).

On a complete other note, uninstalling App Volumes Manager does NOT remove any Windows Firewall rules it creates, and in fact each time you install it creates another instances of the existing rules for 80 and 443.  That's not necessarily harmful, but it is messy

[Ray_handels]

Hey JHT,

Thanks very much for that information Good to know cause we will be going to version 2.6 today.

It would still be nice if we could be doing an in-place upgrade so no uninstall that could cause these issues.

I'm not quite sure if a "new" user would understand the impact of that option.

[BigBen_TX]

Additionally when updating App Volumes be sure you delete the app templates and upload the newest version.  If you don't you will be created 2.5.x AppStacks on version 2.6.