• This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated May 28, 2019 by Justin N.

Upgrading via uninstall/reinstall

  • Jeff P
    April 24, 2019 07:01:46 PM

    We are trying to move from version 5.5 to 7.0.  I have read through the uninstall/reinstall process described on pages 11-13 of https://s3.amazonaws.com/zertodownload_docs/Latest/Upgrading%20Zerto%20Virtual%20Replication.pdf

    2 questions:

    1. The document says to “Install the VRAs on the hosts in the site and pair the sites” but should this actually be upgrade VRAs in this case?  And is that done via the UI, like normal, after 7.0 installation is done?
    2. The document says that “You cannot import VPGs that have the same name as a VPG that is already defined in current installation. If a VPG in the import file has the same name as an existing VPG, it is disabled and is grayed-out.”  I take it this means you should not manually re-create any VPGs, and that your old VPGs should only be brought back in via import of that XML file, yes?  Since the whole point is to keep everything the same in the end, just bump the version to 7.

    Thanks!

    Connie L
    May 27, 2019 08:35:54 PM

    We’ve only updated in sequence, maybe when you uninstall Zerto, presumably the VRAs will be uninstalled at that time as well? I would probably go with installing NEW VRAs for 7.0 as they added a feature that allows you to be able to login to them via ssh key from the ZVM without contacting Zerto support. They mentioned upgraded VRAs would not be able to advantage of that feature.

    Justin N
    May 28, 2019 01:03:36 PM

    Connie is correct – when the installer is ran to uninstall the existing version, it will also automatically uninstall the VRAs. This is why a user must export the VPG settings and delete all VPGs (while being sure to keep the recovery disks!) before uninstalling the ZVM (and thus automatically uninstall the VRAs as well). Once the new ZVM version is installed, you can install the new VRAs and finally reimport the VPG settings.

    Jeff P
    May 28, 2019 02:22:15 PM

    Thanks for the replies.  We performed this upgrade several weeks ago, and while it went mostly according to plan, we had some issues with the uninstallation from one of our sites.  We had to manually edit a file to enter the site ID back in to get the sites to pair up properly, then and only then could we import the VPGs and resume replication.

    Zerto support was spot-on in helping us resolve that issue.  All in all, it was a fairly straightforward process, it just took a really long time to remove all the VRAs and then to figure out why our VPG import was failing (see above).

    Justin N
    May 28, 2019 02:40:42 PM

    Great to hear Jeff and I hope this info helps others in the future too!

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