Vertica Documentation – Upgrading Vertica

Admin: Upgrade paths

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Upgrades are generally incremental: you must upgrade to each intermediate major and minor release. For example, in order to upgrade from Vertica 9.0 to 10.1, you would upgrade incrementally as follows:

Vertica 9.0 to 9.1
Vertica 9.1 to 9.2
Vertica 9.2 to 9.3
Vertica 9.3 to 10.0
Vertica 10.0 to 10.1

As new versions are released, you must continue upgrading incrementally (from 10.1 to 11.0, then 11.0 to 11.1, and so on).

Note

You can skip service pack releases. For example, the preceding upgrade path omits releases 9.0.1 and 9.1.1.

If you're upgrading from a FIPS-enabled Vertica 9.2.x database to 10.1.1 and want to maintain your FIPS certification, you must perform a direct upgrade. For instructions, see Nonsequential FIPS database upgrades.

Be sure to read the Release Notes and New Features for each version in your path. Documentation for the current Vertica version is available in the RPM and at https://docs.vertica.com/latest. The same URL also provides access to documentation for earlier versions.

For guidance on upgrading from unsupported versions, contact Vertica Technical Support.

Admin: Before you upgrade

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Before you upgrade the Vertica database, perform the following steps:

Verify that you have enough RAM available to run the upgrade. The upgrade requires approximately three times the amount of memory your database catalog uses.

You can calculate catalog memory usage on all nodes by querying system table RESOURCE_POOL_STATUS:
```
=> SELECT node_name, pool_name, memory_size_kb FROM resource_pool_status WHERE pool_name = 'metadata';
```
Perform a full database backup. This precautionary measure allows you to restore the current version if the upgrade is unsuccessful.
Perform a backup of your grants.
Verify platform requirements for the new version.
Determine whether you are using any third-party user-defined extension libraries (UDxs). UDx libraries that are compiled (such as those developed using C++ or Java) may need to be recompiled with a new version of the Vertica SDK libraries to be compatible with the new version of Vertica. See UDx library compatibility with new server versions.
Check catalog storage space.
If you're upgrading from Vertica 9.2.x and have set the PasswordMinCharChange or PasswordMinLifeTime system-level security parameters, take note of their current values. You will have to set these parameters again, this time at the PROFILE-level, to reproduce your configuration. To view the current values for these parameters, run the following query:
```
=> SELECT parameter_name,current_value from CONFIGURATION_PARAMETERS
    WHERE parameter_name IN ('PasswordMinCharChange', 'PasswordMinLifeTime');
```

After you complete these tasks, shut down the database gracefully.

Admin: Upgrade Vertica

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Important

Before running the upgrade script, be sure to review the tasks described in Before you upgrade.

Repeat this procedure for each version in your upgrade path:

Perform a full backup of your existing database. This precautionary measure lets you restore from the backup, if the upgrade is unsuccessful. If the upgrade fails, you can reinstall the previous version of Vertica and restore your database to that version.

If your upgrade path includes multiple versions, create a full backup with the first upgrade. For each subsequent upgrade, you can perform incremental backups. However, Vertica recommends full backups before each upgrade if disk space and time allow.
Use admintools to stop the database.
On each host where an additional package is installed, such as the R language pack, uninstall it. For example:
```
rpm -e vertica-R-lang
```
Important
If you omit this step and do not uninstall additional packages, the Vertica server package fails to install in the next step.
Make sure you are logged in as root or sudo and use one of the following commands to run the RPM package installer:
- If you are root and installing an RPM:
```
# rpm -Uvh pathname
```
- If you are using sudo and installing an RPM:
```
$ sudo rpm -Uvh pathname
```
- If you are using Debian:
```
$ sudo dpkg -i pathname
```
On the same node on which you just installed the RPM, run update_vertica as root or sudo. This installs the RPM on all the hosts in the cluster. For example:

Red Hat or CentOS
```
# /opt/vertica/sbin/update_vertica --rpm /home/dbadmin/vertica-12.0.x.x86_64.RHEL6.rpm --dba-user mydba
```
Debian
```
# /opt/vertica/sbin/update_vertica --deb /home/dbadmin/vertica-amd64.deb --dba-user mydba
```
Important

You can upgrade the Vertica server running on AWS instances created from a Vertica AMI. To upgrade the Vertica server on these AWS instances, you need to add the following arguments to the upgrade script:
- --dba-user-password-disabled
- --point-to-point
The following requirements and restrictions apply:
- The DBADMIN user must be able to read the RPM or DEB file when upgrading. Some upgrade scripts are run as the DBADMIN user, and that user must be able to read the RPM or DEB file.
- Use the same options that you used when you last installed or upgraded the database. You can find these options in /opt/vertica/config/admintools.conf, on the install_opts line. For details on all options, see Install Vertica with the installation script.
  
  Caution
  If you omit any previous options, their default settings are restored. If you do so, or if you change any options, the upgrade script uses the new settings to reconfigure the cluster. This can cause issues with the upgraded database.

Omit the --hosts/-s host-list parameter. The upgrade script automatically identifies cluster hosts.
If the root user is not in /etc/sudoers, an error appears. The installer reports this issue with S0311. See the Sudoers Manual for more information.

Start the database. The start-up scripts analyze the database and perform necessary data and catalog updates for the new version.

If Vertica issues a warning stating that one or more packages cannot be installed, run the admintools --force-reinstall option to force reinstallation of the packages. For details, see Reinstalling packages.
When the upgrade is complete, the database automatically restarts.

Note
Manually restart any nodes that fail to start up.
Perform another database backup.

Upgrade duration

Duration depends on average in-memory size of catalogs across all cluster nodes. For every 20GB, you can expect the upgrade to last between one and two hours.

You can calculate catalog memory usage on all nodes by querying system table RESOURCE_POOL_STATUS:

=> SELECT node_name, pool_name, memory_size_kb FROM resource_pool_status WHERE pool_name = 'metadata';

Post-upgrade tasks

After you complete the upgrade, review post-upgrade tasks in After you upgrade.

Admin: After you upgrade

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

After you finish upgrading the Vertica server package on your cluster, a number of tasks remain.

Required tasks

If you created projections in earlier releases with pre-aggregated data (for example, LAPs and TopK projections) and the projections were partitioned with a GROUP BY clause, you must rebuild these projections.
Verify on each node that the upgrade reduced database catalog memory usage.
Verify your database retained the grants from before you upgraded. See Backing up and restoring grants for more information.
Reinstall packages such as the R language pack that you uninstalled before upgrading. For each package, see its install/upgrade instructions.

Note
Vertica Place is automatically reinstalled with the Vertica server package.
If the upgrade was unable to install one or more packages, reinstall them with admintools.
Upgrade the Management Console.
If your Vertica installation is integrated with Hadoop, upgrade the HCatalog connector.

Optional tasks

Import directed queries that you exported from the previous version. For details, see Batch query plan export and Exporting directed queries from the catalog.
If you're upgrading from Vertica 9.2.x and have set the PasswordMinCharChange or PasswordMinLifeTime system-level security parameters, set them again at the PROFILE-level.

Vertica Documentation – Upgrading Vertica

Admin: Upgrade paths

Note

Admin: Before you upgrade

Admin: Upgrade Vertica

Important

Important

Important

Caution

Note

Upgrade duration

Post-upgrade tasks

Admin: After you upgrade

Required tasks

Note

Optional tasks