Considerations for server maintenance update upgrades

Upgrade Principle

1. Server upgrades are designed to address bottlenecks in one aspect of the system, but the results of upgrades do not create new system bottlenecks.

Upgrade should be considered for the server which side of the bottleneck, but from the application, not because of a simple upgrade of a particular component, and create other performance bottlenecks. As a simple example, a single CPU server can be configured with 256MB memory, but if the dual-CPU server is configured with 256MB memory, memory will surely become a bottleneck in the system.

2. The premise of server upgrade is that the system hardware configuration can provide users with upgrade space.

Server upgrades in the server hardware configuration has the ability to upgrade under the premise, so in the initial stage of network planning, management personnel should be applied to the needs and growth of an initial estimate, in the selection of models, for future expansion reserve a certain space.

3. Upgrades must be tailored to specific applications, rather than simply adding hardware.

Server applications are often special, a server is mainly for an application, so when the server performance bottlenecks, the upgrade should be for this application upgrade, rather than for a certain part. It is not considered easy to upgrade single hardware to meet the performance requirements of the application.

　　 upgrade failure and its resolution

Upgrades can be divided into online upgrades and offline upgrades.

1. Online Upgrade: The system does not shut down the situation, upgrade a part, the system is not affected by any. On the IA schema server, the hot-swappable hard drive upgrades and RAID level migrations are not restarted by the system.

2. Offline Upgrade: The system needs to shutdown, the upgrade needs to be in the case of not charged. This mainly refers to the CPU, memory upgrades. For example, the upgrade of the CPU, whether it is to extend the CPU or replace the CPU, it is recommended that the system reinstall. When expanding the CPU, especially when the single CPU is extended to multiple CPUs, the system needs to reinstall the SMP kernel, which requires the system kernel to be recompiled for UNIX systems, and for Windows systems to reinstall the operating system. Another example is the memory upgrade, after memory increase, system performance parameters and database application parameters must be adjusted.

　　 Upgrade Case

A single CPU database application server (support dual CPU system), with the increase in data volume and the number of clients increased, the system needs to upgrade, install the UnixWare operating system, how to proceed?

According to the user's application analysis, need to upgrade many parts of the system, such as: CPU, memory, hard disk and so on. In this case, the upgrade should include the following steps:

1. Backup system data (prevent misoperation causing system data loss).

2. Power off, offline implementation of hardware upgrades, install CPU, memory and hard disk, pay attention to ensure that the hardware specifications and the original motherboard hardware specifications consistent.

3. Restart the operating system to increase the CPU license.

4. Use RAID features to consolidate the newly added hard drive.