HP EVA P6550 HP P6000 EVA Updating Product Software Guide (XCS 11001100) (5697 - Page 24

Selecting a time to perform an online upgrade To ensure the success of an online upgrade, selecting the appropriate time is essential. The two factors that most affect this selection are: • Criticality of business applications-Do not select a time that could affect critical business applications. • I/O load-Select a period of low I/O activity to ensure that the upgrade is completed as quickly as possible, and to avoid disruptions to hosts and applications due to timeouts. While there are advantages to performing an online upgrade, there are circumstances when it is not advisable. Therefore, give careful consideration to your configuration and your application deployment before making an attempt to do an online upgrade. NOTE: When determining the appropriate time to do an online upgrade, ensure that no configuration-related replication tasks are in process (creating or deleting DR groups, snapshots, snapclones, or mirrorclones, or presenting to hosts). Analyzing array I/O using HP P6000 Performance Data Collector Use the HP P6000 Performance Data Collector tool included with HP P6000 Command View to gather and analyze statistics on array utilization. This section provides recommendations on using HP P6000 Performance Data Collector to gather statistics to help identify periods of low array activity. For more information about HP P6000 Performance Data Collector, see the chapter "Monitoring array performance" in the HP P6000 Command View User Guide. See Table 1 (page 6) for the link to this document. IMPORTANT: If you have an array-based management system, you can install and run HP P6000 Performance Data Collector on a supported Windows host connected to the EVA4400, P63x0 EVA or P65x0 EVA. Guidelines for using HP P6000 Performance Data Collector NOTE: Before using HP P6000 Performance Data Collector, you may want to configure friendly names to simplify identifying your arrays, virtual disks, and hosts. See the HP P6000 Command View User Guide for more information about friendly names. Use the following guidelines to ensure that you select an appropriate period to perform an online upgrade of controller software: • Identify a time period during which I/O load on the array will be low. During this time period, run HP P6000 Performance Data Collector to gather I/O data. • Run HP P6000 Performance Data Collector to gather I/O data during the chosen time period. For example, if you suspect that I/O load may be low between midnight and 2 AM on Sunday morning, run HP P6000 Performance Data Collector during this period. • If the I/O load pattern is low, capture the data over the same time period several more times to ensure the low I/O load pattern is repeatable. • After selecting a time period for the upgrade, perform the following tasks to ensure that I/O activity does not increase unexpectedly during the upgrade: ◦ Alert all system users that they should minimize the load on the array during the time period selected for the upgrade. ◦ Identify any automated processes that may increase the I/O load during the upgrade period, including backup applications and scripts. Suspend these processes for the duration of the upgrade. 24 Preparing for the upgrade