BeeGFS 8.3 Upgrade Guide

Please read and understand the information below completely before attempting the upgrade.

Possible upgrade paths

The following upgrade paths from older versions are supported:

  • v6.y ⟶ v7.4.z ⟶ v8.3.z

  • v7.y ⟶ v7.4.z ⟶ v8.3.z

  • v8.y ⟶ v8.3.z

The required steps depend on your starting version.

General requirements

Always check the release notes and upgrade guides between the source and destination releases for any new features or configuration options you may wish to update. Most configuration changes are optional, with the following exception:

  • After upgrading to or past BeeGFS 8.3, users of the BeeGFS community edition will need to obtain a community license. Refer to the Licensing page for more details. No action is required if you are using an unexpired/expired enterprise or unexpired temporary license.

  • If you are using Remote Storage Targets a new required sysBypassFileAccessCheckOnMeta client parameter was introduced in 8.1 that must be set in the client used for all Remote and Sync nodes when upgrading to or past 8.1.

Upgrade from 6 or ≤7.3

If you are still on BeeGFS 7.3 or earlier, first upgrade to 7.4 following the BeeGFS 7.4 upgrade guide. Once complete, continue with with the path to upgrade from 7.4.

Upgrade from 7.4

It is possible to upgrade directly from BeeGFS 7.4 to BeeGFS 8.3. First check all servers and clients are on supported Linux distributions and kernel versions for BeeGFS 8.3. Then follow the steps in the BeeGFS 8 upgrade guide.

Upgrade from any 8.x release

It is possible to upgrade from any BeeGFS 8 release to BeeGFS 8.3. Follow the steps in this guide.

Before Upgrading

  1. Check all servers and clients are on supported Linux distributions and kernel versions.

Upgrade to 8.3

  1. If you use buddy mirroring, make sure that all buddies are in GOOD state in the previous output before proceeding.

  2. Stop the BeeGFS system:

    • stop/unmount all clients

    • stop all storage services

    • stop all meta services including any event listeners (if in use)

    • stop the management service

  3. Refer to the backup guide and take a full system backup if possible. If a full backup is not possible ensure you at least take a minimal backup of important system configuration.

    Note

    A minimal backup of important system configuration after stopping all services and before upgrading packages is strongly recommended. Proceed without any backups at your own risk!

  4. Download the BeeGFS package repository file for your distribution to all nodes. Visit the BeeGFS download page and follow the step-by-step directions to add the BeeGFS package repositories to your Linux distribution’s package manager.

  5. Upgrade all BeeGFS packages.

  6. Update optional configuration:

  1. The default client tuneMsgBufSize has been increased from 64KB to 1MB, greatly improving performance when listing the contents of large directories. No action is needed unless you manually overrode this parameter and wish to adjust it to match the new recommended default, or do not wish to increase the buffer size and want to manually revert it to the original value.

  2. Support for ID-Mapped Mounts was introduced in this release allowing BeeGFS mount options to now include ID-mapped views defined using X-mount.idmap. Existing mounts will continue to work as they did before and no action is required unless you wish to start using ID-mapped views.

  3. If you use Remote Storage Targets it is now possible to associate remote targets with storage class(es) allowing archived objects to be automatically restored. Refer to the documentation in the default /etc/beegfs/beegfs-remote.toml file for details.

  1. Start all services and clients and verify that the system works as expected.

  2. Update required configuration:

  1. Users of the BeeGFS community edition will need to obtain a community license after upgrading. Refer to the Licensing page for more details. No action is required if you are using an unexpired/expired enterprise or unexpired temporary license.

  1. After finishing the upgrade run the following commands to verify the upgrade:

    1. Verify all nodes and targets are online and in a good state: beegfs health check

      beegfs health check

      Tip

      If the “Available Capacity” check warns that targets are low on free space, you can adjust the “capacity pool” thresholds defined in the beegfs-mgmtd.toml so they are better suited to your environment.