How to open a proactive case for patching or upgrading Streams for Apache Kafka (formerly known as AMQ Streams)

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Streams for Apache Kafka (version 2.7 and newer)
  • AMQ Streams (until version 2.6)

Issue

  • Upgrading production Streams for Apache Kafka/AMQ Streams
  • 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 subscriptions and entitlements for Streams for Apache Kafka/AMQ Streams.
  • Proactive Cases should be submitted a few days before the activity is scheduled to begin (preferably 7-14 days in advance)
    • If the activity requires weekend coverage, please open the Proactive Case no less than 5 days before the upcoming activity.
  • 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.

IMPORTANT: Before any maintenance operation, it is recommended to have full backups of the whole Streams for Apache Kafka/AMQ Streams Production environment: the backup should include both the cluster configuration and data, and should be stored on a remote infrastructure or storage.

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:

    • Exact version of each Streams for Apache Kafka/AMQ Streams.
    • Exact OS or OpenShift version.
    • Brief description of the topology.

  • Date / Time of 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.

  • Data Attachments: Capture the following information and upload it to the case:

    • For Streams for Apache Kafka (or AMQ Streams) installation on RHEL please read this solution
    • For Streams for Apache Kafka (or AMQ Streams) installation on OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) please read this solution

Running into issues during the patch or upgrade
If any issues are found during the patching or upgrading of Streams for Apache Kafka/AMQ Streams, proceed with:

  1. Open a support ticket addressing the issue while referencing the number of the Proactive Case.
  2. Report the new support ticket number in the Proactive Case opened.

Example of a Proactive Case

  • Case title
[PROACTIVE] Streams for Apache Kafka 2.7 to 2.8 upgrade
  • Case description
Hello,  we are planning to upgrade Streams for Apache Kafka in Production environment:
- Streams for Apache Kafka 2.7 to 2.8

Cluster of 3 nodes running on [ either OCP version *x* or RHEL version *y* ]

  Maintenance Window Information:
  - Date - Saturday, April 10th - Sunday, April 11th, 2024
  - Time frame - 3 hours
  - Timezone - CET (UTC+01:00)
  - Start Time - 23h00min, CET (UTC+01:00)
  - End Time - 02h00min, CET (UTC+01:00)
  - 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
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