Using Serviceguard Extension for RAC, 10th Edition, April 2011

For more information on support, compatibility, and features for SGeRAC, refer to the Serviceguard
Compatibility and Feature Matrix, located at www.hp.com/go/hpux-serviceguard-docs
—> HP Serviceguard Extension for RAC.
Steps for Rolling Upgrades
Use the following steps when performing a rolling SGeRAC software upgrade:
1. Halt Oracle (RAC, Clusterware) software on the local node (if running).
2. Halt Serviceguard/SGeRAC on the local node by issuing the Serviceguard cmhaltnode
command.
3. Edit the /etc/rc.config.d/cmcluster file to include the following line:
AUTOSTART_CMCLD = 0
4. Upgrade the node to the new Serviceguard and SGeRAC release. (SGeRAC requires the
compatible version of Serviceguard.)
5. Edit the /etc/rc.config.d/cmcluster file, on the local node, to include the following
line:
AUTOSTART_CMCLD = 1
NOTE: It is optional to set this parameter to “1.” If you want the node to join the cluster at
boot time, set this parameter to “1”, otherwise set it to “0.”
6. Restart the cluster on the upgraded node (if desired). You can do this in Serviceguard Manager,
or from the command line, issue the Serviceguard cmrunnode command.
7. Start Oracle (Clusterware, RAC) software on the local node.
8. Repeat steps 1-7 on the other nodes, one node at a time until all nodes have been upgraded.
NOTE: Be sure to plan sufficient system capacity to allow moving the packages from node
to node during the upgrade process, to maintain optimum performance.
If a cluster fails before the rolling upgrade is complete (perhaps because of a catastrophic power
failure), the cluster could be restarted by entering the cmruncl command from a node that has
been upgraded to the latest revision of the software.
Keeping Kernels Consistent
If you change kernel parameters or perform network tuning with ndd as part of doing a rolling
upgrade, be sure to change the parameters to the same values on all nodes that can run the same
packages in a failover scenario. The ndd command allows the examination and modification of
several tunable parameters that affect networking operation and behavior.
Example of Rolling Upgrade
The following example shows a simple rolling upgrade on two nodes, each running standard
Serviceguard and RAC instance packages, as shown in Figure 20. (This and the following figures
show the starting point of the upgrade as SGeRAC A.11.15 for illustration only. A roll to SGeRAC
version A.11.16 is shown.)
SGeRAC rolling upgrade requires the same operating system version on all nodes. The example
assumes all nodes are running HP-UX 11i v2. For your systems, substitute the actual release numbers
of your rolling upgrade path.
142 Software Upgrades