Upgrading and Updating Foreman

In this guide, the terms upgrade, update, and migrate have the following meanings:

Upgrading: The process of advancing your Foreman server and Smart Proxy server installations from a y-stream release to the next, for example Foreman 3.1 to Foreman 3.2. For more information, see Upgrading Overview.
Updating: The process of advancing your Foreman server and Smart Proxy server installations from a z-stream release to the next, for example Foreman 3.2.0 to Foreman 3.2.1.
Migrating: The process of moving an existing Foreman installation to a new instance.

1. Upgrading Overview

Review prerequisites and available upgrade paths below before upgrading your current Foreman installation to Foreman 3.2.

Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman.

1.1. Prerequisites

Upgrading to Foreman 3.2 affects your entire Foreman infrastructure. Before proceeding, complete the following:

Read the Foreman 3.2 Release Notes.
Plan your upgrade path. For more information, see Upgrade Paths.
Plan for the required downtime. Foreman services are shut down during the upgrade. The upgrade process duration might vary depending on your hardware configuration, network speed, and the amount of data that is stored on the server.

Upgrading Foreman takes approximately 1 – 2 hours.

Upgrading Smart Proxy takes approximately 10 – 30 minutes.
Ensure that you have sufficient storage space on your server. For more information, see Preparing your Environment for Installation in Installing Foreman server from a Connected Network and Preparing your Environment for Installation in Installing Smart Proxy server.
Back up your Foreman server and all Smart Proxy servers. For more information, see Backing Up Foreman server and Smart Proxy server in the Administering Foreman guide.
Plan for updating any scripts you use that contain Foreman API commands because some API commands differ between versions of Foreman.

Warning

If you customize configuration files, manually or use a tool such as Hiera, these customizations are overwritten when the installation script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the foreman-installer script to test for changes. For more information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution How to use the noop option to check for changes in Foreman config files during an upgrade.

1.2. Upgrade Paths

You can upgrade to Foreman 3.2 from Foreman 3.1.

Foreman servers and Smart Proxy servers on earlier versions must first be upgraded to Foreman 3.1. For more information, see the Foreman 3.1 Upgrade documentation.

High-Level Upgrade Steps

The high-level steps in upgrading Foreman to 3.2 are as follows:

Upgrade Foreman server to 3.2. For more information, see Upgrading Foreman server.
Upgrade all Smart Proxy servers to 3.2. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxy servers.
Continue with Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks.

1.3. Following the Progress of the Upgrade

Because of the lengthy upgrade time, use a utility such as tmux to suspend and reattach a communication session. You can then check the upgrade progress without staying connected to the command shell continuously. For more information, see the tmux manual page.

If you lose connection to the command shell where the upgrade command is running you can see the logs in /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman.log to check if the process completed successfully.

1.4. Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman

You can upgrade Foreman to version 3.2 and keep Smart Proxies at version 3.1 until you have the capacity to upgrade them too.

All the functionality that worked previously works on 3.1 Smart Proxies. However, the functionality added in the 3.2 release will not work until you upgrade Smart Proxies to 3.2.

Upgrading Smart Proxies after upgrading Foreman can be useful in the following example scenarios:

If you want to have several smaller outage windows instead of one larger window.
If Smart Proxies in your organization are managed by several teams and are located in different locations.
If you use a load-balanced configuration, you can upgrade one load-balanced Smart Proxy and keep other load-balanced Smart Proxies at one version lower. This allows you to upgrade all Smart Proxies one after another without any outage.

2. Upgrading Foreman

Use the following procedures to upgrade your existing Foreman to Foreman 3.2:

Review Prerequisites.
Upgrading Foreman server
Upgrading Smart Proxy servers
Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks

2.1. Upgrading Foreman server

This section describes how to upgrade Foreman server from 3.1 to 3.2. You can upgrade from any minor version of Foreman server 3.1.

Before You Begin

Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman.
Review and update your firewall configuration prior to upgrading your Foreman server. For more information, see Preparing your environment for installation in Installing Foreman server.
If you have edited any of the default templates, back up the files either by cloning or exporting them. Cloning is the recommended method because that prevents them being overwritten in future updates or upgrades. To confirm if a template has been edited, you can view its History before you upgrade or view the changes in the audit log after an upgrade. In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Monitor > Audits and search for the template to see a record of changes made. If you use the export method, restore your changes by comparing the exported template and the default template, manually applying your changes.

Smart Proxy Considerations

Note that Foreman server upgraded from 3.1 to 3.2 can use Smart Proxy servers still at 3.1.

2.1.1. Upgrading a Connected Foreman server

Use this procedure for a Foreman server with access to the public internet

Warning

If you customize configuration files, manually or using a tool such as Hiera, these changes are overwritten when the installation script runs during upgrading or updating. You can use the --noop option with the foreman-installer script to test for changes. For more information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution How to use the noop option to check for changes in Foreman config files during an upgrade.

Upgrade Foreman server

Stop all Foreman services:
```
# foreman-maintain service stop
```
Take a snapshot or create a backup:
- On a virtual machine, take a snapshot.
- On a physical machine, create a backup.
Start all Foreman services:
```
# foreman-maintain service start
```
Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration in the /etc/zones.conf or /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf files, back up the configuration files because the installer only supports one domain or subnet, and therefore restoring changes from these backups might be required.
Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files and do not want to overwrite the changes, enter the following command:
```
# foreman-installer --foreman-proxy-dns-managed=false \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-managed=false
```
In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Discovered hosts. On the Discovered Hosts page, power off and then delete the discovered hosts. From the Select an Organization menu, select each organization in turn and repeat the process to power off and delete the discovered hosts. Make a note to reboot these hosts when the upgrade is complete.
Determine if the system needs a reboot:
1. Check the version of newest installed kernel:
  # rpm --query --last kernel | head -n 1
2. Compare this to the version of currently running kernel:
  # uname --kernel-release
Optional: If the newest kernel differs from the currently running kernel, reboot the system:
```
# reboot
```
If using a BASH shell, after a successful or failed upgrade, enter:
```
# hash -d foreman-maintain service 2> /dev/null
```

2.2. Upgrading Smart Proxy servers

This section describes how to upgrade Smart Proxy servers from 3.1 to 3.2.

Before You Begin

You must upgrade Foreman server before you can upgrade any Smart Proxy servers. Note that you can upgrade Smart Proxies separately from Foreman. For more information, see Upgrading Smart Proxies Separately from Foreman.
If you use Content Views to control updates to the base operating system of Smart Proxy server, update those Content Views with new repositories, publish, and promote their updated versions. For more information, see Managing Content Views in the Content Management Guide.
Ensure the Smart Proxy’s base system is registered to the newly upgraded Foreman server.
Ensure the Smart Proxy has the correct organization and location settings in the newly upgraded Foreman server.
Review and update your firewall configuration prior to upgrading your Smart Proxy server. For more information, see Preparing Your Environment for Smart Proxy Installation in Installing Smart Proxy server.

Upgrading Smart Proxy servers

Create a backup.
- On a virtual machine, take a snapshot.
- On a physical machine, create a backup.
  
  For information on backups, see Backing Up Foreman server and Smart Proxy server in the Administering Foreman 3.1 guide.
Check when the kernel packages were last updated:
```
# rpm -qa --last | grep kernel
```
Optional: If a kernel update occurred since the last reboot, reboot the system:
```
# reboot
```
Optional: If you made manual edits to DNS or DHCP configuration files, check and restore any changes required to the DNS and DHCP configuration files using the backups made earlier.
Optional: If you use custom repositories, ensure that you enable these custom repositories after the upgrade completes.

2.3. Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks

Some of the procedures in this section are optional. You can choose to perform only those procedures that are relevant to your installation.

Upgrading Discovery
Reclaiming PostgreSQL Space

2.3.1. Upgrading Discovery

If you use the PXE-based discovery process, then you must complete the discovery upgrade procedure on Foreman and on any Smart Proxy server with hosts that you want to be listed in Foreman on the Hosts > Discovered hosts page.

This section describes updating the PXELinux template and the boot image passed to hosts that use PXE booting to register themselves with Foreman server.

From Foreman 1.22, provisioning templates now have a separate association with a subnet, and do not default to using the TFTP Smart Proxy for that subnet. If you create subnets after the upgrade, you must specifically enable the Foreman or a Smart Proxy to provide a proxy service for discovery templates and then configure all subnets with discovered hosts to use a specific template Smart Proxy.

During the upgrade, for every subnet with a TFTP proxy enabled, the template Smart Proxy is set to be the same as the TFTP Smart Proxy. After the upgrade, check all subnets to verify this was set correctly.

These procedures are not required if you do not use PXE booting of hosts to enable Foreman to discover new hosts.

Upgrading Discovery on Foreman server

Update the Discovery template in the Foreman web UI:

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates.
On the PXELinux global default line, click Clone.
Enter a new name for the template in the Name field, for example ACME PXE global default.
In the template editor field, change the line ONTIMEOUT local to ONTIMEOUT discovery and click Submit.
In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Administer > Settings.
On the Provisioning tab, set Default PXE global template entry to a custom value for your environment.
Locate Global default PXELinux template and click on its Value.
Select the name of the newly created template from the menu and click Submit.
In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates.
Click Build PXE Default, then click OK.

Note

If the template is modified, a Foreman upgrade overrides it to its default version. Once the PXE Default configuration is built, the template configured in the Settings is deployed to the TFTP. This can result in deploying the default template if the new template is correctly set in the Settings.

In the Foreman web UI, go to Configure > Discovery Rules and associate selected organizations and locations with discovery rules.

Verifying Subnets have a Template Smart Proxy

Ensure all subnets with discovered hosts have a template Smart Proxy:

In the Foreman web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Subnets.
Select the subnet you want to check.
On the Smart Proxies tab, ensure a Template Smart Proxy has been set for this subnet.

For more information about configuring subnets with template Smart Proxies, see Configuring the Discovery Service in the Provisioning guide.

2.3.2. Reclaiming PostgreSQL Space

The PostgreSQL database can use a large amount of disk space especially in heavily loaded deployments. Use this procedure to reclaim some of this disk space on Foreman.

Procedure

Stop all services, except for the postgresql service:

# foreman-maintain service stop --exclude postgresql

Switch to the postgres user and reclaim space on the database:
```
# su - postgres -c 'vacuumdb --full --all'
```
Start the other services when the vacuum completes:
```
# foreman-maintain service start
```

Use this chapter to update your existing Foreman server and Smart Proxy server to a new patch version, for example, from 3.2.0 to 3.2.1.

Updates patch security vulnerabilities and minor issues discovered after code is released, and are often fast and non-disruptive to your operating environment.

Before updating, back up your Foreman server and all Smart Proxy servers. For more information, see Backing Up Foreman server and Smart Proxy server in the Administering Foreman guide.