Provider ID as VM identifier upgrade

Abiquo 5.3 introduces the provider ID as a unique VM identifier for deployed VMs. The Abiquo UUID will continue as the VM's identifier in the API, even when undeploying and deploying the VM again.

This document gives a general overview of the migration for the provider ID feature as part of the upgrade to Abiquo 5.3.0.

Abiquo has developed a set of provider ID migration (PIM) tools to run once to upgrade the platform and adapt the platform data to the new identifier. The tools are jar files in a separate RPM package.

We expect that the provider ID migration could take a long time in large environments, so allow extra time for your upgrade, and test it in the largest test environment that you have available.

You must test this update in a lab environment before you run it in your production environment.

Upgrade test process

In the test of the upgrade to Abiquo 5.3, do these steps.

In your lab environment, run the PIM tools as part of an upgrade test.
On a test VM, add a dump of your production database, run liquibase to update the database to 5.3, and run the PIM planner. See Create a test VM and run PIM planner on a database dump.
On your production system (during a quiet time), run the PIM migrator in dry-run mode (this is the default) and then resolve any warnings or errors before you continue.

Upgrade process

In the upgrade to Abiquo 5.3 do these steps.

Create a full backup of your platform, and dumps of your database and Redis systems.
Start the Abiquo upgrade, and after you update the database, STOP the upgrade, run the PIM tools, and then continue the upgrade

PIM tools overview

This is an overview of how to run the PIM tools for informational purposes.

For full instructions, please see Upgrade Abiquo

First you should run the PIM tools in your lab environment, and then you should run them on a test VM with a dump of your production database.

Start the upgrade with the usual process, and also install the PIM on all servers
After you update the database, STOP the upgrade, and run the PIM tools as described in the following steps.
Run the PIM planner tool against your database. This tool will create a migration plan for all of your VMs and list the required migration steps.
Check the output of the planner tool. If there are any warnings or errors, resolve them, and then run the PIM planner again.
For ALL Remote Services servers, copy the migration plan to the server.
On each Remote Services server, run the PIM migrator.
By default the PIM migrator tool will run in dry run mode without making any changes.
For each entity in the migration plan, the PIM migrator tool will connect to the provider and compute the provider ID.
Check the output of the PIM migrator. Java warnings can be safely ignored if using JDK8.
If there are any warnings or errors, check the VMs, storage and networking, and then run the PIM planner and PIM migrator in dry run mode again.
Run the PIM migrator tool in update mode with the "--no-dry-run" option
1. The PIM migrator tool will update VMs, as well as backup jobs, firewalls, and load balancers
2. The PIM migrator tool will output an SQL update file. Copy this file to your database server
While the Abiquo platform is still stopped, run the migrator's SQL update file on your database server.
Complete the Abiquo upgrade as usual
After you complete the migration and restart your environment, check it as described below
Uninstall the PIM tools

Check your environment

The migration should only change the identification of deployed VMs in Abiquo. After you migrate to provider ID, you can perform the following checks:

List the Redis subscriptions, which will use the Provider ID as the unique key
Use the VSM console to check the firewalls and load balancers
If you are using Veeam, log in to the backup server and check the names of the backup jobs, which will now include the ProviderID

After you start Abiquo, log in as the cloud administrator and check VMs, firewalls, load balancers, and so on.