PAM Upgrade from 3.3.2 to 3.4

[Higor Louback]

Hi team, just to see the best recommendation.

I am running with two sites and two appliances in each node. (One site in Brazil and one site in Canada)

I need to upgrade all from 3.3.2 to 3.4.

What would be the recommendation considering I need to clone all appliances before upgrading and my goal is the minimum downtime possible?

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Security Analyst
DXC Technology
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[Reatesh Sanghi]

Hello Higor,

I Am sure you would have looked at the product documentation for upgrade..

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/content/broadcom/techdocs/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/layer7-privileged-access-management/privileged-access-manager/3-4/old-upgrade-to-release-3-4.html

This part of the document speaks about min downtime.
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/content/broadcom/techdocs/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/layer7-privileged-access-management/privileged-access-manager/3-4/upgrading/upgrading-across-a-multi-site-cluster.html

Thanks,
Reatesh.




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Principal Support Engineer
Broadcom
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[Andreas Mueller]

Hello Higor,

 

Upgrade strategy of a Multi Site cluster we described here

http://techdocs.broadcom.com/content/broadcom/techdocs/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/layer7-privileged-access-management/privileged-access-manager/3-4/upgrading/upgrading-across-a-multi-site-cluster.html

 

Basically, to limit downtime first you eject as many secondary site members as possible to keep the cluster alive. These you then upgrade without affecting production. Then you take down the cluster and upgrade the remaining ones without touching the cluster configuration. Finally after you brought up the upgraded cluster you insert back the previously ejected nodes.

 

Best Regards,

Andreas

 

[Higor Louback]

Thanks Andreas, but it is not clear to me the best strategic to backup my appliances. Should I do a clone or snapshot? Also, can we do it by the cluster and appliances on?

 

Higor

 

 

[Andreas Mueller]

Hello Higor,

 

Safest and Easiest is to shut down the VM and take a snapshot.

 

If you need to take a backup of the VM please shutdown the VM and perform a copy of the VM's data files on the storage level.

Once you start up the copied VM for the very first time it is required to basically reply "I copied it" to the hypervisor's prompt.

 

Please refrain to clone any instance of PAM as this might render the clone unusable.

 

If you shut down the VM to take the snapshot or backup you might have to consider to stop the cluster first, depending if you have more than two nodes available in the primary site.

 

Best Regards,

Andreas