Upgrading Nutanix CE from 5.5 to 5.6
Background.
Some of you may have read my guide on deploying Nutanix CE 5.5 onto bare metal Oracle Ravello. Well as tends to happen, software is updated and now is the time to look to upgrade to the next Nutanix CE release which is based on Acropolis Operating System 5.6. I was hoping that the software would just pop up and show as an available point and click upgrade, but it didn’t. It’s not a hard process, but I will cover what you need to do below to get upgraded.
It is worth pointing out that for a new install, there is an ISO available now to install Nutanix CE from which will greatly simplify the install experience, especially if deploying onto Ravello.
Let’s do this thing.
Step 1 – Get prepared.
First things first, log onto the Nutanix Community portal and grab the latest binaries for Nutanix CE. You get login here with your credentials.
Now grab the following 3 downloads.
Once downloaded, extract the 3 files from the Metadata Zip file.
Step 2 – Upgrade Acropolis Operating System (AOS)
Log into Prism Element, hit the settings cog and choose Upgrade Software.
As I said at the beginning, the update packages do not automagically appear, they need to be uploaded to the CE cluster.
Ensure you are on the AOS tab and select upload the AOS base software binary.
We need to select the metadata file and the AOS binary its self.
Select this metadata file.
And this binary.
The screen should now look like this, hit upload.
Note the current version, this will change following a successful upgrade.
Once the files have uploaded, chose the upgrade package and hit upgrade.
Do you want to upgrade? I guess the answer is yes if you are reading this 🙂
Let the installer do its thing.
Ok one step down, one more to go.
Step 3 – Upgrade Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
This is pretty much a rinse and repeat of the AOS upgrade, expect this time we choose the AHV binaries.
On the Hypervisor tab, choose to upload files.
Click to choose the metadata and binary files for AHV.
Which is this for metadata,
And this for the binary.
Click to upload now.
Once uploaded, click upgrade.
Sir, Yes Sir.
And wait for the upgrade to complete.
And you are done.
Conclusion.
To be fair, the whole upgrade process is pretty straightforward and painless. Check out the whats new in 5.6 on Nutanix portal.
Ian
