appliance installer/upgrade path

[cerulean grove]

I have inherited 2 storagegid deployments and am needing to push updates as they are running very old everything.
One of the problems I'm having is finding the appliance installer. I have tried every network interface on the units and it just doesn't appear to come up on any of them.
Currently running 11.6.0.4 and using SG100/SG6060 devices.
In order to do the updates to v12 I know it has to go through all the previous steps.. 11.7+fixes, 11.8+fixes, etc.
My other question is what is the proper order and need of installing the other things, such as SANtricity, NVSRAM and firmware are supposed to be.
Not sure if updating the devices to 11.7 and upwards also upgrade everything else at the same time or not.

I have gone through so many different documents and they don't really give any clear indication of the entire process, so any pointers would be greatly helpful

[bright basin]

The installer GUI is only available if the appliance is either uninstalled or has been put in maintenance mode.
For an appliance that is up and running, part of a grid, that service is not running at all.

StorageGRID upgrades are "all inclusive" - matching appliance installer, PGE, comes bundled, NVSRAM for certain SANtricity versions (check README for hotfix), and in SG12 even disk firmware.
When performing major version upgrades, new PGE and firmware gets staged on the appliances and gets applied after reboot.

I would start with StorageGRID - first latest hotfix for the version you are at, the a combo upgrade of SG+latest hotfix of the next higher version etc.
Once you have reached your target version and latest hotfix, I would start with SANtricity.
Depending on how old the current SANtricity version is, you might have to do several iteration to get to the latest.
This information required should be available in the "StorageGRID appliance" download pages on the suport site.
You might have to select an older version of the appliance download page to get older, intermediate, versions.

SG first and the SANtricity has the benefit of newer NVSRAM files being bundled with SG so that you can use the orchestrated SANtricity upgrade procedure from inside the grid manager GUI - else you'd have to manually put one node at a time in maintenance mode., upload SANtricity and the correct NVSRAM, once upgraded exit maintenance mode, etc.

[cerulean grove]

ok.. just to confirm.
We are running 11.6.0.8
So I need to upgrade to latest 11.6, then 11.7 and all the fixes, then the same for 11.8 and 11.9 as well as 12.
Once all of that is done update SANtricity and then the NVSRAM?
Or just the SG updates and that auto-updates everything else?

[bright basin]

As you update SG, newer NVSRAM files will come with each upgrade/hotfix.
But the NVSRAM files bundled never gets applied until you launch the orchestrated SANtricity upgrade from inside the Grid Manager.

With SANtricity, if you are lower than 11.70.5P1 or 11.70.5R1, you need to upgrade to 11.70.5R1 first and then you can go all the way to 11.90R5 that was released for SG appliances just the other day.
Remember to download SANtricity from the "StorageGRID Appliance" download page as the versions published there are the ones validated for the appliance nodes.

[cerulean grove]

that's what is confusing me.
SANtricity needs to be upgraded by me, manually, because it does not get upgraded when applying the StorageGRID versions. Correct?

So, my biggest question is.. what is the correct process to upgrade everything correctly.

We have
StorageGRID 11.6.0.8
SANtricity 11.70.2P1
NVSRAM N280X-872834-DG2

Upgrade path for StorageGRID
11.6.0.8 -> HotFix 11.6.0.16 -> 11.7.0 w/HotFix 11.7.0.14 -> 11.8.0 w/HotFix 11.8.0.15 -> 11.9.0 w/HotFix 11.9.0.12 -> 12.x

Upgrade path for SANtricity
11.70.2P1 -> 11.70.5 -> 12.00

Upgrade path for NVSRAM
SANtricity 11.90x -> N280X-890834-DG3.dlp

Upgrade path for firmware?

[bright basin]

For StorageGRID versions you are spot on.

SANtricity 11.70.2P1 -> 11.70.5R1 -> 11.90R5 (12.0 is not supported for SG appliances yet)
https://mysupport.netapp.com/site/products/all/details/storagegrid-appliance/downloads-tab/download/64317/2026.05/downloads

SANtricity upgrades does not have to be performed manually but can be orchestrated from the Grid Manager (see attached image)
By using this method, you only need to upload the SANtricity OS file (versions as per above), NVSRAM for supported versions is already available to this orchestrated upgrade procedure.

All relevant SG appliance firmware comes bundled with the SG major versions and will get applied as part of the upgrades. Seem to recall in some cases the new fw was only staged during upgrade and a sub-sequent reboot of the node was required to activate the new fw. If required, this reboot can be performed from the "Tasks" tab, browsing to the node in the Grid Manager. There is also a "rolling reboot" option since some SG version.

Disk FW comes bundled with SG software since SG 12. Prior to that, disk fw upgrades needed to be handled manually.

[cerulean grove]

ok, so is there a specific order for the upgrades to occur in?
Such as: Upgrade SG to X and SANtricity to X at the same time, or can SG get updated all the way to the newest release and once that is done upgrade SANtricity to it's latest

[bright basin]

I would do all the SG upgrades first and then the SANtricity.
From the 3 different choices in my screenshot, only one of these jobs can be run at a time. The leftmost one, SG upgrade is cablable of doing combo-upgrades of SG-base + hotfix in one go.

SG doesn't really use a lot of SANtricity features hence there is no super strict support matrix to follow. By upgrading SG first, we make sure the latest NVSRAM files are available (part of base and or hotfix, stored on primary admin, ready to be pushed to storage nodes) for the orchestrated SANtricity upgrade.