[OpenAFS] AFS DB server upgrade advice

[Jack Neely]

Greetings,

I'm planning out an upgrade path for our AFS DB servers.  A lot of
changes need to be made, so I wanted to see if folks know of a
safer/better way to do the below.

We have 3 cells, each of which as 3 DB servers running Solaris 8 and
OpenAFS 1.4.7.  We would like to upgrade to RHEL 6 based servers running
OpenAFS 1.6.1.  Two DB servers in the EOS cell need new IPs, the other
IPs will stay the same.  99% of our clients use --afsdb, except the few
remaining Solaris 8 machines.

Our plan for this is below.  One server at a time, we start with the
highest IP to do the sync master last.

1 Shutdown the AFS server processes
2 Take Backups
3 Build/Install 1.6.1 on the server
4 Recreate an empty db/ directory unless we are upgrading the sync
  master -- it gets a pre-populated db and config files (upclient
  master)
5 Start the AFS server processes 
6 Check for sanity

Once this process has produced a stable DB environment we had planned on
running the process again where step 3 is replaced by shutdown solaris
machine and replace it with a RHEL box.

In the EOS cell 2 servers must change IPs.  One of these new servers
will end up being the sync master as it will have the lowest IP.  (The
current sync master gets to keep its IP.)  So we were thinking about a
similar upgrade path.  

1 Upgrade all solaris servers to openafs 1.6.1
2 Create two new RHEL/1.6.1 DB servers on what will be the new IPs and
  let one become the new sync master.  Update DNS records and CellServDB
  files on the other EOS DB servers as appropriate.  5 DB servers at
  this point.
3 Check for sanity.
4 Upgrade via above the old sync master to RHEL
5 Remove the solaris DBs from afsdb DNS records and CellServDBs on the
  EOS DB servers.
6 Monitor existing solaris servers to see usage drop off
7 Shutdown the 2 existing solaris servers and surplus

Any recommendations for making this process any smoother?

Jack
-- 
Jack Neely <jjneely@ncsu.edu>
Linux Czar, OIT Campus Linux Services
Office of Information Technology, NC State University
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