Automated Satellite Workshop: RHEL In-place Upgrade Automation exercise
This exercise will introduce a comprehensive approach to automate in-place upgrades for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The solution uses Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) to execute upgrades at enterprise scale across a large estate of RHEL hosts. The exercise demonstrates how to use an example of this approach to perform upgrades from RHEL7 to RHEL8 and from RHEL8 to RHEL9. You will also learn about how this solution can be customized to meet the special requirements of your enterprise environment.
There are four key features that the solution approach recommends to deliver success at scale:
As you progress through this exercise, you will learn more about the importance of these features and the different options for how you might implement them in your enterprise. For this exercise, we assume you have at least some experience using Ansible Automation Platform and working with Ansible playbooks and roles. If you’re new to Ansible, consider first completing the workshop Ansible for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Table of Contents
Presentations
The exercises are self explanatory and guide the participants through all the phases of an automated RHEL in-place upgrade. All concepts are explained as they are introduced.
There is an optional presentation deck available with additional information on the benefits of the approach demonstrated in this workshop: RHEL In-place Upgrades and Conversions Automation
Time Planning
The time required to complete the exercise depends on the number of participants and how familiar they are with Linux and Ansible. The exercises themselves should take a minimum of ~45 minutes. The introduction in the optional presentation adds 20 to 30 minutes. There are some optional exercises which can be skipped, but are recommended if time allows. Additionally, supplemental exercises at the end of the exercise provide for open-ended experimentation and exploring customizations that may apply to your specific environment and requirements. The lab environment provisioned could even be used for a multi-day deep dive workshop, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.
Lab Diagram
The lab environment provisioned for the exercise includes an Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) controller, a Red Hat Satellite, and a number of RHEL and CentOS instances. The AAP instance is used to run playbook and workflow automation jobs. For this exercise, the jobs are executed against the RHEL 7 hosts which will be upgrade in place to RHEL 8. The automation uses LVM to manage the snapshot/rollback capability.
Exercises
This exercise is composed of three sections each of which includes a number of steps. Each exercise builds upon the steps performed and concepts learned in the previous exercises, so it is important to do them in the prescribed order.
Section 1 - Pre-upgrade Analysis
- 1.1 - Workshop Lab Environment
- 1.2 - (Optional) Deploy a Three Tier App
- 1.3 - Run Pre-upgrade Jobs
- 1.4 - Review Pre-upgrade Reports
- 1.5 - Perform Recommended Remediation
- 1.6 - (Optional) Custom Pre-upgrade Checks
Section 2 - RHEL OS Upgrade
- 2.1 - Run OS Upgrade Jobs
- 2.2 - Let’s Talk About Snapshots
- 2.3 - Check if the Upgrade Worked
- 2.4 - (Optional) How is the Three Tier App Doing?
Section 3 - Rolling Back
- 3.1 - (Optional) Trash the Instance
- 3.2 - Run Rollback Job
- 3.3 - Check if Upgrade Undone
- 3.4 - Rinse and Repeat
Workshop Navigation
Your will find links to the previous and next exercises at the bottom of each exercise page. Click the link below to get started.
Navigation