How to open a proactive case for patching or upgrading Red Hat JBoss EAP

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • JBoss EAP

Issue

  • Upgrading production JBoss EAP clusters.
  • How to open a case to notify Red Hat of upgrades taking place so appropriate resources are available?
  • What information is useful for Red Hat support when opening a proactive ticket for weekend or after hours work?

Resolution

Introduction - what is a Proactive Case?

Proactive cases are a way for Premium customers to provide an advance notice to Red Hat Support of planned upgrades, migrations, patching, or any other maintenance activity. Typically, these events happen outside regular business hours.
Having prior knowledge of the planned activity provides Red Hat with an opportunity to ensure the right information is made available to better prepare technical support should you encounter an issue.

Note: New installations do not entitle a Proactive Case, as they do not fit with the Severity Level Definitions for Severity 1. For issues encountered during new installations, please open a regular Support Case.

Prerequisites

  • The account must have active Premium JBoss EAP subscriptions.
  • It is recommended to submit Proactive Cases several days before the activity is scheduled to begin (preferably 7-14 days in advance), in order to allocate appropriate resources for the upcoming event.
    • If the activity requires weekend coverage, the Proactive Case must be submitted at least 4 business days before the upcoming activity (by close of the business day, for example on the Tuesday prior to the upcoming activity).
    • Note: Weekend Proactive Cases submitted less than 4 business days before the activity will be considered "Late Entry", and treated through normal Follow the Sun workflow. For such, Red Hat will not be able to guarantee that the appropriate resources would be staffed for the weekend.
  • In order to allocate the most appropriate engineer from different teams, no matter where they may be worldwide, Proactive Support Cases are conducted in the English language only.
  • It is recommended to familiarize yourself with the Reference Guide for Engaging with Red Hat Support article, which provides best practices for engaging Red Hat Support.
  • If you have a Technical Account Manager (TAM), a Solution Architect (SA), or a Customer Success Manager (CSM) - please engage them when planning a Proactive Case.

Opening a Proactive Case Support Case

  • Provide all relevant details for the upcoming event, that will help communicate what change(s) are taking place.
  • Required information:

    • Case title: should be a title that summarizes the case preceded by [PROACTIVE].

    • Severity - open the case on a Severity level of 3. When the activity begins the Severity will be raised to 1 by Red Hat engineers so that the proper resources be allocated if an issue arises.

    • Description: Describe as detailed as possible the environment and applications that would be affected by the upgrade, other components that would be patched at same time, the patch that will be applied, etc. The description should also include the following information:
      1. Exact version of JBoss.
      2. Exact OS and version.
      3. Exact JDK and version.
      4. Is it running in standalone or domain configuration?
      5. Is it a single node, or multiple clustered nodes?
      6. List application deployable (jar/war/ear/sar) and where they are deployed.

      • And also the following details:
        - Exact Date and time of the event: Information of the maintenance window with Timezone (preferably referencing the offset from UTC).
        - Contact information: Primary and secondary contact name, emails and phone number (with region code) of the people that will perform the update.
        - Attachments: Capture the following information and upload it to the case to be able to compare it with the same information after the upgrade:
        1. server.log
        2. console.log, proccess-controller.log and host-controller.log (only for EAP 6+ running in a domain configuration)
        3. Java Garbage Collection logging, also known as GC logging
        4. Configuration files:
          1. $JBOSS_HOME/bin/standalone.conf and $JBOSS_HOME/standalone/configuration/standalone*.xml (for EAP 6+ running in a standalone configuration)
          2. $JBOSS_HOME/bin/domain.conf, $JBOSS_HOME/domain/configuration/domain.xml and $JBOSS_HOME/domain/configuration/host*.xml (for EAP 6+ running in a domain configuration)
        5. For JBoss EAP versions 6.x run the '[JBoss Diagnostics Reporter](See https://access.redhat.com/solutions/221103)', also known as JDR (pronounced jitter)
        6. An SOS Report of the underlying Red Hat Enterprise Linux system

Example of a Proactive Case:

  • Case Title:
  [PROACTIVE] - JBoss EAP 6 to 7 update
  • Case Description:
  Hello,
  We are planning to update from JBoss EAP 6.4.24 to JBoss EAP 7.2.9, which our production billing application uses. 
  No other package will be updated.
  The JBoss EAP environment is running on a RHEL 7.9 virtual machine.
  Due to the server upgrade process, downtime was already planned to boot the system with the new one.

  Maintenance Window Information:
  - Date - Saturday, April 10th - Sunday, April 11th, 2021
  - Time frame - 3 hours
  - Timezone - IST (UTC+05:30)
  - Start Time - 23h00min, UTC+5:30
  - End Time - 02h00min, UTC+5:30
  - Rollback window - 1 hour

  Primary Contact Information:
  - Name: Jane Doe
  - Email: jane.doe@example.com
  - Phone: +1-123-456-7890

  Secondary Contact Information:
  - Name: John Doe
  - Email: john.doe@example.com
  - Phone: +1-123-456-7891
  • Case Attachments:
  - sosreport-hostname-rhel7.tar.xz
  - jboss-6-files.tar.xz
  - jdr_16-12-01_09-21-10_jboss-example01.zip
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