Prepare to upgrade a universe

Review changes that may affect your automation

Upgrade the operating system

If your universe is running on a deprecated OS, you need to update your OS before you can upgrade to the next major release of YugabyteDB. Refer to Patch and upgrade the Linux operating system.

Review major changes in previous YugabyteDB releases

Before starting the upgrade, review the following major changes in previous YugabyteDB releases. Depending on the upgrade you are planning, you may need to make changes to your automation.

Upgrading from versions earlier than v2.16.0

The YB Controller (YBC) service was introduced in v2.16.0 for all universes (except Kubernetes), and is required for YBA 2.16.0 and later.

YBC is used to manage backup and restore, providing faster full backups, and introduces support for incremental backups.

Impacts

  • Firewall ports - update your firewall rules to allow incoming TCP traffic on port 18018, which is used by YBC, for all nodes in a universe.

  • On-premises provider - if you use on-premises providers with manually-provisioned nodes, update your current procedures for manually provisioning instances to accommodate YBC. This includes the following:

  • OS patching procedure - for universes created using an on-premises provider with manually-provisioned nodes, if your OS patching procedures involve re-installing YugabyteDB software on a node, you will need to update those procedures to accommodate YBC.

Upgrading from versions earlier than v2.18.0

YBC was introduced for Kubernetes clusters in v2.18.0. Refer to Upgrading from versions earlier than v2.16.0.

Upgrading from versions earlier than v2.18.2

The Node Agent was introduced for all universes in v2.18.2. Node agent is an RPC service running on a YugabyteDB node, and is used to manage communication between YBA and the nodes in universes. Except for Day 0 tasks during initial installation, YBA no longer uses SSH and SCP to manage nodes; instead, YBA connects to the Node agent process listening on port 9070, and performs all its management via this secure connection. For more information, refer to the Node agent FAQ.

Impacts

  • Firewall ports - update your firewall rules to allow incoming TCP traffic on port 9070 for all nodes in a universe. YugabyteDB Anywhere listens to node agents on port 443.

  • On-premises provider - if you use on-premises providers with manually-provisioned nodes, you will need to update your current procedures for manually provisioning instances to include installing node agent. Refer to Install node agent.

  • OS patching procedure - for universes created using an on-premises provider with manually-provisioned nodes, if your OS patching procedures involve re-installing YugabyteDB software on a node, you will need to update those procedures to accommodate node agent.