Now that PowerVC is installed successfully, it's time to perform a couple of steps to ensure that it's at the latest level. In this video, I'll cover the post-installation task of updating to the latest code level and then I'll address the process to upgrade from a previous version rather than performing a new installation as I outlined in the previous video. Obviously, I think this is pretty much standard across any product installation. It's recommended that you update PowerVC with the latest fixes after you install. As you see, the update requires a few steps, but very similar to the installation, you'd get the fix file. You extract the files from the fix file and then you install the fixes. When you get to the fix central website, generally what you'll do is you'll look for PowerVC fixes, obviously and as of this recording that involve typing PowerVC in the product selector field under the find product tab and then you indicate the current version and platform that you'll install that. Browse for fixes. Now, that's going to give you the opportunity to find the latest fix packs and the latest interim fixes, or you can choose a specific fix if you've been given that fix number and then you look for the latest fix pack. You want to update to the latest fix pack first and then you want to return to fix central specifying that new version and pick up the latest interim fixes for that. The packages themselves accumulate all levels prior, so fix packed two would include all of the fixes from fix pack one. You don't have to put one on first and then put two on second. That brings us to the installation of the fix. The graphic summarizes the process and shows the steps at the command line. You see it's the same as installing except the command is update, not install. Now, I do keep my fixes in a different subdirectory than the install packages to keep things a little bit better organized. It also gives me a way of reinstalling my environment back to a known working state in the event of some kind of a disaster. If I have a PowerVC backup, I can reproduce my environment rather quickly. In the example, fixes are applied to PowerVC1.4.1. It's going to 1.4.1.2, which is fix pack two. An update changes the fourth digit of the version designation. Applying a fix pack is disruptive, so it's advisable to do these updates when PowerVC services are not needed. Now speaking of a disaster, let's say you want to start all over again on your PowerVC setup. Maybe your testing the product. Maybe you encountered a serious problem when you were doing an update, or an upgrade and you need to start clean, you need to start over again, or just let's say you're moving to a new server, you've migrated the instance over and you want to repurpose the old server for another job and you want to clean up the PowerVC installation after you've migrated, rather than just completely reinstalling the operating system. You'd want to uninstall PowerVC. Now, this is time to introduce a new topic here, a new concept and that is the utilities directory. The utilities that are provided by PowerVC after the installation is complete. Those utilities are in a directory called opt IBM PowerVC/bin. Remember in one of the previous videos I said opt IBM PowerVC was an important directory to know. Here's another reason why /bin. You're going to want to become familiar with that directory, especially because there are a lot of utilities there. One of the utilities in that directory is the PowerVC-uninstall. As you see in the graphic, you have to be root to use that utility, a log is generated with the results of the uninstall. Now there's a flag to turn off that logging, but I wouldn't recommend that of course. There's also a flag that forces the uninstall. I'd consider that similar to what we saw with the minus U flag on the install side of things where the force flag is used to clean up after a failed uninstall. It's a way of forcing through the uninstall process rather than allowing the normal process to take place. Also I want to be clear here, this is very important. Uninstall of PowerVC does not remove or change anything in the environment that was managed by PowerVC. Any objects, any resources that were created in PowerVC like Virtual Machines, volumes, those are going to remain unchanged in the underlying platform by this uninstall process. Images will be deleted. But images are a PowerVC only construct and you're not going to be using PowerVC there anymore, so those images would go away. I'll also note that rail prerequisite packages that are installed as part of the installation of PowerVC itself. Those remain installed, they are not removed as well. Now, related but different to updating is the concept of upgrading. Upgrading is actually more related to installation than it is to updating. This is the process of moving an existing PowerVC server or PowerVC instance to a higher version of the code. For example, you're going from PowerVC1.4.3 to 1.4.4. In that version designation, changing any of the first three digits, that's considered an upgrade. Now, as with updates, upgrades are disruptive. Although I would probably should have recommended doing a backup for before you did the update, it's less likely you're going to run into problems. But a backup is always good before you change the code levels, no matter what, that's just good administration practice. But in this case, it's definitely advisable that you do a backup before you start the upgrade. Remember back to what I said about having all your code levels in different directories so that you can reproduce and then apply the backup. This is all related to what I was talking about before with respect to the installation. Also note that upgrades can be performed starting from the n minus 2 version. For example, an upgrade to 1.4.4 can be performed from 1.4.2 or 1.4.3 so 1.4.4 minus 1.4.2. If you were walking into a situation where the installation was 1.4.1, and you wanted to go to 1.4.4 you can either just completely re-install, which probably you don't want to do, or you would upgrade to 1.4.3 first say, and then take it to 1.4.4. Releases are supported for two years. But note that within those two years, there can be as many as four new versions. Generally there only two new versions per year in two years that's potentially four. Upgrading at least every two years is advisable and annually, in my opinion, is not a bad idea. Let's think about this. You may say, "Wait a minute, I have to update this thing every year? " Well, you're not updating a running production environment. You are in a way, but your users aren't going to know this is happening. The business is not going to be disrupted by this. You are losing the capabilities of PowerVC for the time that you're doing the update, okay, or the upgrade. It's a little different than doing an upgrade, say of an operating system or an application. All right, so moving on. As you see in the graphic, the upgrade process is the same as the installation process. The installer recognizes that there's an existing power receiver on the system and it says, "Hey, do you want to do an upgrade?" That's really nice. It's basically everything we saw in the previous video about doing install. You're prompted like exactly the same as before. Do you want to do the Cloud self-service code or do you want to just use the standard code? Generally, I install the Cloud self-service code, it's there and it's usable then. From then on when you decide to take advantage of that, then you interact with a license agreement, you accept it to proceed, and you're followed by the choice to have the installer modify the firewall or leave it as opposed to install task. I've said this before. I always have the installer open the necessary ports. Then finally, one last prompt to continue or abort the installation, this is your point of no return most installers have this. You'll see process indicators on the screen as the installation proceeds. You'll want to watch for errors, problems, and then the upgrade log, install log. It contains the messages that were displayed as the process unfolded for later evaluation and debug. Now, if it's a successful upgrade, all the PowerVC services are then started and you can begin again to use the GUI, and of course you can interact with the CLI at that point as well. Note that attempting to log in to the GUI or attempting to browse to the GUI during this period, it'll throw up a message indicating that the piracy servers and maintenance mode. That's nice. It doesn't just hang there and give unsuspecting PowerVC administrator or user, the false sense that there's something rather than network or something like that. Now, if you want to validate that the code level was actually updated, that it reflects the expected value the quickest way I know to do that, I mean you can do it at the CLI by looking at the package names, but you just click the Help icon in the GUI and the upper right corner of the GUI and click "About." Similar to many other products, the resulting display that should show the expected code level so nothing surprising there. All right, now close out the topic of upgrade here with one last tip. When I'm dealing with upgrades of IBM PowerVC, It's important to treat it as part of a larger system environment that includes all the other components that we've talked about. All of the elements of this virtualization environment should be reviewed for the needed or required updates as a result of the update that you're doing or the upgrade that you're doing with PowerVC. Now generally the updates of fix PACS, you are not going to have worry about this, but when you are doing the upgrade then you are moving to a new version of PowerVC that may very well require a new version of the HMC, a new version of the VIO server, new version of Nova link, a new version of the firmware on the systems it just depends. You're going to want to consider all of those components as an integrated ecosystem an update, or rather upgrade piracy as part of that and considering that. All right, so that takes us to the end of installation. We're ready to now actually do something with the product in future videos. What I'll do is begin the process of introducing into PowerVC those external hardware resources that PowerVC is going to manage, and then we'll get into managing and using hardware environment in even subsequent videos.
