The best practices and recommendations for performing RHEL Upgrade using Leapp

Updated

Disclaimer

The below document describes the best practices and recommendations in order to plan and upgrade RHEL using Leapp. This covers high level recommendations only and might not be suitable for all the customers' environments. Before you could actually start implementing these recommendations, please get this reviewed with your sysadmins and application teams accordingly.

Also refer to the In-place upgrade Support Policy

Environment

Prerequisites

  • If your system architecture is 64-bit Intel and upgraded from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 make sure GRUB to GRUB2 migration is completed.
  • Check for the compatibility issues before doing the upgrade, i.e. for all Database, Cluster, Application compatibility checks must be performed by application teams or respective stakeholders before proceeding with the upgrade procedure.
  • Check if your hardware is certified for RHEL 8/RHEL 9/RHEL 10. Refer this link.
  • Perform the upgrade process on non production/test environment, before applying it directly on the production box.
  • When planning the upgrade on a production system, we recommend scheduling an extended maintenance window as the upgrade process may take longer depending on the number of 3rd party software installed on your server.
  • We would suggest not to plan the Leapp pre-upgrade + upgrade process in the same maintenance window as the pre-upgrade procedure might take longer based on the number of inhibitor (issues) you might come across.
  • It is recommended to remove/unmount any unneeded non standard, non OS / application related filesystems during the upgrade process.
  • In place Upgrade of Red Hat High Availability system is not supported. Workaround for RHEL 8 to RHEL 9
  • Performing an in-place upgrade of RHEL 7 IdM servers to RHEL 8 is not supported.
  • Performing an in-place upgrade of RHEL 8 IdM servers to RHEL 9 is not supported.
  • Performing an in-place upgrade of RHEL 9 IdM servers and IdM server nodes to RHEL 10 is not supported.
  • Red Hat recommends using automation to achieve the scale required to perform Leapp upgrades in environments with hundreds or thousands of RHEL hosts. For information about an end-to-end automation approach, see This content is not included.How to automate upgrades before RHEL 7 end of maintenance. The same automation approach works for other RHEL versions, even going back to RHEL 6 to 7 and also for RHEL 9 to 10.
  • Ensure the system is updated to the supported minor version before the Leapp upgrade. Refer Supported in-place upgrade paths for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Leapp preupgrade

  • Ensure you have a full system backup or a virtual machine snapshot. If the system is a Physical system, then you can use the Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) utility.

  • Capture sosreport of the system before upgrade and copy it to a different system.

  • Run the Leapp Pre-Upgrade process as mentioned in the official documentation.

  • Once the preupgrade command is complete, review the /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file.

    • Important:
      Always review the entire pre-upgrade report, even when the report finds no inhibitors to the upgrade. The pre-upgrade report contains recommended actions to complete before the upgrade to ensure that the upgraded system functions correctly.

  • If the leapp-report.txt contains any “inhibitors” then refer to the Remediation section in the same report for the resolution.

  • If the command fails with the disk space issue, then refer this solution.

Leapp upgrade

  • Before running the leapp upgrade, make sure all the inhibitors/errors reported in the preupgrade phase are resolved.
  • Actual system upgrade happens after the system reboot, when the system boots from Upgrade Initramfs. Make sure you have console access to view the upgrade process.

Post Upgrade

Facing issue with Leapp

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