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Step A: Get ready - AWS Elemental Conductor Live
Check essential notesVerify the worker node typeSave the latest database backupCreate bootable kickstartMove custom files

Step A: Get ready

The following steps prepare you to perform a standard upgrade of an Conductor Live node. Performing this procedure helps ensure you don't lose data due to a malfunctioning node.

Check essential notes

Refer to the essential notes in the current Release Notes to identify changes in behavior with the upgrade.

Verify the worker node type

The software installer that you use for the nodes varies depending on if you have GPU-accelerated software type, or CPU-only. To determine the type of software, look at any web interface screen of the worker node. The top shows icons as follows:

  • CPU and GPU icons: the software is GPU-accelerated.

  • CPU icon only: the software is CPU-only.

Dashboard showing status indicator, CPU usage, GPUs usage, and memory usage meters.

Save the latest database backup

Perform these steps on the primary Conductor node and all worker nodes in the cluster.

When you install the upgraded operating system, your previous database backups are deleted. Locate and save the most recent backup off the system. You can use this backup later if you need to downgrade from the version that you are now installing.

To save the latest backup

  1. From a Linux prompt, log in to the appliance with the elemental user credentials.

  2. Navigate to the directory where Conductor Live saves its backups.

    [elemental@host ~]$ cd /home/elemental/database_backups

  3. Locate the most recent backup and save it to a location off of the AWS Elemental system. The backup name includes the date and time that the backup was taken, in a format similar to this: elemental-db-backup_live_3.23.5_2018-02-08_21-01-36.tar

Create bootable kickstart

You must install the host operating system from an .iso file onto each physical machine that will be running AWS Elemental software. Doing so is referred to as “kickstarting the system”.

Make sure that you install the right version of the operating system with each piece of software. The correct .iso file is available at AWS Elemental Support Center Activations.

Create a Boot USB Drive

Do this from your workstation.

Use a third-party utility (such as PowerISO or ISO2USB) to create a bootable USB drive from your .iso file. For help, see the knowledge base article Creating Bootable Recovery (kickstart) Media.

Move custom files

If the primary Conductor Live or any worker nodes have custom AWS Elemental assets, such as scripts, saved to /opt/elemental_se/scripts, then move them to a safe location so they're not deleted during the upgrade.