OneFS Journal Format Compatibility Issue During Simulator Upgrade from 9.4 to 9.10

Hello DELL-Sam L,

Thank you for your response.

We understand that a fresh installation is required. However, our main concern is preserving our current configuration (LDAP/AD, SMB shares, NFS exports, access zones, quotas, network settings...), which took significant time to build to match our production environment.

Will isi config backup create from 9.4.0.15 be fully compatible with isi config backup restore on a fresh 9.10.1.5 installation, or are there known incompatibilities between these versions?

What is the recommended procedure for migrating configuration from 9.4 to 9.10 when a fresh install is required?

Thank you for your assistance!

Hello nadirogd,

If you are following the oneFS upgrade and planning guide it list out how we suggest that you perform the upgrade. https://dl.dell.com/content/manual81478978-powerscale-onefs-upgrade-planning-and-process-guide.pdf?language=en-us

@nadirogd ,

Create ans SR and ask for a OneFS upgrade and the team will go through prechecks with you and should be able to answer your questions.

Hello @Phil.Lam thank you for your response.

If you are referring to SRs in MyService360, I have already opened several service requests. However, the Dell team does not seem able to assist, as they only support physical clusters.

This is currently blocking me, as I need guidance on how to back up the configuration of my simulator, especially if the upgrade from 9.4 to 9.10 is not possible as mentioned, while keeping it aligned with the production cluster.

Could you please advise on how I can get proper support for my simulator?

@nadirogd, 

I meant on the real cluster, just to assess.  The simulator is a bit different.   I had a customer that upgraded from OneFS 9.4 to 9.7 without backing up config with no issues.

Hello @Phil.Lam, could you let me know when the upgrade from 9.4 to 9.7 was completed? Also, would 9.7 be a suitable intermediate OneFS version to upgrade to first before proceeding to 9.10.1.5 to avoid the Journal Format Compatibility Issue ?

@nadirogd , the upgrade was last year. They will upgrade from 9.7.1.6->9.10.1.x later this year.

I will try upgrading my simulator from 9.4.0.15 to 9.7.1.13 to see if it works, and then proceed to 9.10.1.5. Thank you @Phil.Lam !

Hello @Phil.Lam 

I would like to inform you that I attempted yesterday to upgrade my OneFS simulator from version 9.4.0.15 to 9.7.1.13 (the only available patch I found on Dell). Unfortunately, the upgrade failed again with the same error.

As there seems to be no workaround, could you please advise on the recommended procedure to back up and restore the configuration? Our simulator is configured identically to our production cluster, so preserving this configuration is critical to avoid a full rebuild.

@nadirogd ,  as mentioned before, upgrading simulator and real OneFS in production is different.  Open SR for upgrade and Dell support will answer your questions on real OneFS upgrade.

Hello nadirogd,

You will need to do a fresh install of the simulator as journal can’t be upgraded to newer version. There is not an intermediate version that you could use to upgrade the journal to the latest version.