Upgrading to Focal (20.04 LTS)
The upgrade to release 14.0.0 with the OS upgrade to Ubuntu Focal is expected to take some time to be deployed to all devices. Axcient will be releasing the upgrade in small batches to allow our support team time to monitor the upgrade process and respond to any issues encountered while upgrading devices. We anticipate this upgrade to progress through several months, so it may be some time before your devices are targeted for automatic update.
What If I need the update sooner?
Partners who are eager to upgrade their devices immediately have several options:
Installation from ISO: The x360Recover ISO installation image has been updated to the 14.0.0 release. Newly installed systems will be deployed natively on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release with Linux kernel version 5.15.0.
Perform a manual OS upgrade: There is a manual command-line option available to individually perform the software upgrade on each x360Recover device. If you have key systems that you require to be updated immediately to conform to compliance or other requirements, you may follow this procedure to update individual machines.
To perform a manual software update:
a. Log in to the console of the device using the root user account
b. Run this command:
screen -S rb_install_pkg install-replibit-package 14.0.0
Note: When performing the upgrade remotely (i.e. not physically sitting at the monitor and keyboard of the device) be sure to use 'screen' when launching the installation command. Screen executes the command in a detachable shell and will ensure that the upgrade process does not get interrupted or broken if the remote connection is interrupted. This especially includes performing the upgrade from the Console connection within Recover Manager, as the connection WILL be broken when the nginx service is restarted during the upgrade.
Note: You can only upgrade by one major release version at a time. If you unit is running 12.x.x, you must first upgrade to 13.0.0, then repeat the process to upgrade to 14.0.0
Note: The update will be applied as follows:
First the x360Recover application update will be installed. This part of the upgrade takes the normal 20-30 minutes to complete and will reboot the device.
Once the device has been updated to version 14.0.0 (or later) the Ubuntu OS upgrade will commence after the reboot. The OS upgrade may take up to 3-4 hours to complete, but typically takes 30-60 minutes, depending on the underlying system performance.
The system may reboot one or more times during the OS upgrade.
x360Recover services will be disabled during the upgrade, backups and replication will not occur.
You may monitor the OS upgrade progress from the device Web UI.
Perform an OS recovery
If something has gone wrong with the upgrade (either the automatic upgrade cycle or a manual software upgrade) you can perform an OS upgrade.
The OS Upgrade process involves reloading the operating system volume of the device from ISO image and then performing a recovery operation to restore the original identity and data from the previous installation.
Note: You CANNOT perform an OS Recovery on any Single-Disk / Nano style deployment of x360Recover. Installation from ISO wipes all data from the first disk in the system and reinstalls the operating system. Any data on a single-disk deployment will be destroyed. OS Recover relies on the data being stored separately from the OS disk in the system. If something goes wrong with the upgrade of a Single disk / Nano style BDR appliance, you will have to wipe and reload the system as a new device and perform a recovery of backup data from the Vault.
IMPORTANT! Before beginning an OS Recovery you must retrieve the rbas encryption api key from the system before reloading the device from ISO. Copy and save the contents of the file /etc/replibit/rbas_api_auth_token You will be asked to provide this rbas encryption key during the recovery process
Once you have retrieved the rbas api key refer to the following article for instructions on performing an OS Recovery: How to Perform an OS Recovery
Linux kernel versions
The standard kernel version for Ubuntu 20.04LTS is 5.4.0, which is the same kernel available from the Ubuntu 18.04LTS hardware enablement release provided by the x360recover Bionic installation ISO.
The Ubuntu 20.04LTS hardware enablement kernel version is 5.15.0.
Existing appliances upgrading from Ubuntu Bionic to Focal will have the 5.4.0 Linux kernel version.
Newly deployed appliances installed from ISO will have the Linux 5.15.0 kernel.
Why it matters
For the most part, partners need not be concerned with which Linux kernel is deployed on their devices. Existing devices that were working on x360Recover 12.x with Bionic will continue to work on 14.x with Focal and will, in fact, have the same Linux kernel version after the upgrade.
Newly deployed devices installed via the installation ISO will have the latest available kernel (5.15.0) for the best hardware support options.
However, please note: Partners wishing to perform backups for RedHat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL9) or other systems that are using XFS filesystems will be required to upgrade the underlying Linux kernel to 5.15.
RHEL9 ships with Linux kernel 5.14.0 or newer, and the 5.14 kernel introduces breaking change into the XFS filesystem. Systems running a kernel older than 5.14 cannot mount an XFS filesystem that was created under 5.14 or newer. In this case, Backup Complete Checks and File recovery for the Linux protected system cannot be performed on an appliance using the 5.4 kernel, since the backup data from RHEL9 systems cannot be mounted.
To install the Hardware Enablement Kernel on an appliance after upgrading to release 14.0.0, login to the device as root via the console, IPMI, or ssh session and run the following:
apt install linux-generic-hwe-20.04
SUPPORT | 720-204-4500 | 800-352-0248
- Contact Axcient Support at https://partner.axcient.com/login or call 800-352-0248
- Free certification courses are available in the Axcient x360Portal under Training
- To learn more about any of our Axcient products, sign up for a free one-on-one training
- Subscribe to the Axcient Status page for a list of status updates and scheduled maintenance
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