Upgrading Containerized Agents

Any configuration adjustments required after the initial deployment of a containerized Agent must be implemented in conjunction with an upgrade. This also applies to upgrading the Agent to a higher version.

To do so, you have two options:

  1. You can uninstall the existing deployment, modify the values.yaml file to reflect the desired changes, and then reinstall the agent. In this case, you need to follow the steps of a new installation, see Configuring and Deploying Containerized Kubernetes Agents.

  2. You can perform a Helm upgrade as described below. This option is a downtime upgrade by definition.

This page includes the following:

Prerequisites for the Containerized Agent Upgrade

Before upgrading a containerized Agent, make sure you meet the requirements and go through the preparation steps.

Checking for Incompatibilities

Before upgrading your Agent, make sure you fulfill the requirements. Use the compatibility matrix to find the relevant information on supported versions, setup, or prerequisites. Check all CA Automic components and prerequisites for vendor, version, or setup information, and see the compatibility matrix. For more information, see the Compatibility Information.

Downloading the Container Offering

You can download the Agent Helm Chart offering from https://downloads.automic.com/, where you can also see the complete content of the offering.

To download the offering, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to https://downloads.automic.com/ with your Broadcom credentials and select the Agent component.

    On the offering download page, request access to the Automic public Docker registry.

  2. Once you have access to your company's GCP Service account, download the automic-image-pull-secret.json file and create the secret with the command provided.

    This allows your container platform to pull images from our password-protected repository. The following parameters are relevant:

    • Repository: Specifies the Docker image repository.

    • Tag: Defines the specific tag of the image to be used, for example, 24.2.0.

    • pullPolicy: Determines when Kubernetes should pull the image. Common values are Always, IfNotPresent, or Never.

    • pullSecret: (Optional) The name of the Kubernetes secret used to authorize pulling the image from a private registry.

    Example 

    image:
  repository: <path to agent repository>
  tag: "24.2.0"
  pullPolicy: Always
  pullSecret: automic-image-pull-secret

The offering zip file includes the Agent Helm Chart, as well as the values.yaml file that you can use to customize the Agent deployment/installation. For example, you can define the name of the configmap, INI file, the Agent authentication secret, and so on.

Preparing TLS/SSL Certificates

In an on-premises environment, the Agents establish a connection with the Java communication process (JCP), which uses trusted certificates to prove their identity to other communication partners. In AAKE, these Agents establish a connection to an ingress / HTTPS load balancer, which requires a certificate for authentication.

Make sure you have all the required certificates for the TLS/SSL communication in place. For more information, see the following topics in the Automic Automation documentation:

Updating the values.yaml File

When upgrading a containerized Agent, make sure you have a backup of your values.yaml file and do not overwrite it; otherwise, the settings that you have already defined for your environment will be overwritten.

You can keep using the values.yaml file that you used for the installation. If there are no other changes, make sure you adapt the version in the image.tag section.

Example 

image:
  tag: "24.2.0"

If the updated version of the values.yaml file has many changes; make sure you consolidate the new changes with the settings you already had in place.

Upgrade Steps

Note: In this context, the terms upgrade and update are used interchangeably and refer to any changes that are triggered by calling a Helm upgrade.

The following steps guide you through the container-based Agent upgrade:

  1. If you have not done so already, download the relevant Agent offering, see Downloading the Container Offering.

  2. Using Helm, run the upgrade command to start the update process. Make sure you use the new version of the Helm Chart.

    Example

    helm upgrade ig-k8s ig-k8s-24.1.0 .tgz -f values.yaml.

Check the pod status and logs to check the status of the Agent.

See also: