Prerequisites and Guidelines
This section describes how to upgrade a 3-node Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator cluster that was deployed in VMware ESX VMs. If your Orchestrator cluster was deployed in Cisco Application Service Engine, see the Upgrading Multi-Site Orchestrator on Service Engine chapter. If you deployed a single-node Orchestrator (for example, for testing purposes), the upgrade procedure differs slightly and is described in Installing Single Node Orchestrator chapter instead.
Before you upgrade your Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator cluster, you must:-
Ensure that you are running at least Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator, Release 1.2(1). If you are running an earlier release, you must first upgrade it as described in Upgrading Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator to Release 1.2(x).
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Ensure that your current Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator installation is running properly and each node in the cluster has at least 19 GB of free disk space.
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Ensure that all Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator node VMs have been upgraded to any new minimum CPU and RAM requirements that are listed in Prerequisites and Guidelines.
When upgrading the virtual machines:
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It is recommended that all virtual machine CPU and RAM changes are done when the VM is powered down, as such we recommend updating the VMs one at a time to ensure that the cluster remains available.
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Do not change the hard disk size of the Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator VMs.
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Ensure that you have set up the Python environment as described in Setting Up Python Environment.
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If you are upgrading from a release prior to Release 2.1(1), configure at least 10GHz CPU cycle reservation for each Orchestrator VM.
Specific steps are described as part of the upgrade procedure.
Cisco ACI Multi-Site and Cisco APIC Interoperability Support
Prior to Release 2.2(1), you were required to run the same APIC versions in all sites and the version of the Orchestrator that corresponded to that APIC release. During fabric upgrade you were also required to upgrade all the APIC sites first before upgrading the Multi-Site Orchestrator. For example, if you were upgrading the fabrics from APIC Release 4.0(1) to Release 4.1(1), you had to remain on Release 2.0(1) of the Orchestrator until all sites were on APIC Release 4.1(1).
Starting with Release 2.2(1), Multi-Site Orchestrator releases have been decoupled from the APIC releases. The APIC clusters in each site as well as the Orchestrator itself can now be upgraded independently of each other and run in mixed operation mode.
Mixed operation mode is supported for sites running any of the following APIC releases:
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3.2(6) or later
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4.0(1) or later
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4.1(1) or later
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4.2(1) or later
However, keep in mind that if you upgrade the Orchestrator before upgrading the APIC
clusters in one or more sites, the new Orchestrator features may not yet be
supported by an earlier APIC release. In that case a check is performed on each
template to ensure that every configured option is supported by the target sites.
The check is performed when you save a template or deploy a template. If the
template is already assigned to a site, any unsupported configuration options will
not be saved; if the template is not yet assigned, you will be able to assign it to
a site, but not be able to save or deploy the schema if it contains configuration
unsupported by the site. In case an unsupported configuration is detected, an error
message will show, for example: This APIC site version
<site-version> is not supported by MSO. The minimum
version required for this <feature> is
<required-version> or above.
The following table lists the features and the minimum required APIC release for each one:
Feature |
Minimum APIC Version |
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ACI Multi-Pod Support |
Release 3.2(6) |
Service Graphs (L4-L7 Services) |
Release 3.2(6) |
External EPGs |
Release 3.2(6) |
ACI Virtual Edge VMM Support |
Release 3.2(6) |
DHCP Support |
Release 3.2(6) |
Consistency Checker |
Release 3.2(6) |
CloudSec Encryption |
Release 4.0(1) |
Layer 3 Multicast |
Release 4.0(1) |
MD5 Authentication for OSPF |
Release 4.0(1) |
EPG Preferred Group |
Release 4.0(2) |
Host Based Routing |
Release 4.1(1) |
Intersite L3Out |
Release 4.2(1) |