Updating hardware on nodes running on vSphere

    You can update your virtual hardware immediately or schedule an update in vCenter.

    To update the hardware of your virtual machines (VMs) on VMware vSphere, update your virtual machines separately to reduce the risk of downtime for your cluster.

    To reduce the risk of downtime, it is recommended that control plane nodes be updated serially. This ensures that the Kubernetes API remains available and etcd retains quorum.

    Prerequisites

    • You have cluster administrator permissions to execute the required permissions in the vCenter instance hosting your OKD cluster.

    • Your vSphere ESXi hosts are version 6.7U3 or later.

    Procedure

    1. List the control plane nodes in your cluster.

      Example output

      2. control-plane-node-0    Ready    master   75m   v1.26.0
      3. control-plane-node-1    Ready    master   75m   v1.26.0
      4. control-plane-node-2    Ready    master   75m   v1.26.0

      Note the names of your control plane nodes.

    2. Mark the control plane node as unschedulable.

      1. Shut down the virtual machine (VM) associated with the control plane node. Do this in the vSphere client by right-clicking the VM and selecting Power → Shut Down Guest OS. Do not shut down the VM using Power Off because it might not shut down safely.

      2. Update the VM in the vSphere client. Follow Upgrade the Compatibility of a Virtual Machine Manually in the VMware documentation for more information.

      4. Wait for the node to report as Ready:

      5. Mark the control plane node as schedulable again:

        1. $ oc adm uncordon <control_plane_node>

      6. Repeat this procedure for each control plane node in your cluster.

      To reduce the risk of downtime, it is recommended that compute nodes be updated serially.

      Prerequisites

      • You have cluster administrator permissions to execute the required permissions in the vCenter instance hosting your OKD cluster.

      • Your vSphere ESXi hosts are version 6.7U3 or later.

      Procedure

      1. List the compute nodes in your cluster.

        Example output

        Note the names of your compute nodes.

      2. Mark the compute node as unschedulable:

        1. $ oc adm cordon <compute_node>

      4. Update the VM in the vSphere client. Follow Upgrade the Compatibility of a Virtual Machine Manually in the VMware documentation for more information.

      5. Power on the VM associated with the compute node. Do this in the vSphere client by right-clicking the VM and selecting Power On.

      6. Wait for the node to report as Ready:

      7. Mark the compute node as schedulable again:

      8. Repeat this procedure for each compute node in your cluster.

      Prerequisites

      • You have cluster administrator permissions to execute the required permissions in the vCenter instance hosting your OKD cluster.

      • Your vSphere ESXi hosts are version 6.7U3 or later.

      Procedure

      1. If the RHCOS template is configured as a vSphere template follow Convert a Template to a Virtual Machine in the VMware documentation prior to the next step.

      1. Update the VM in the vSphere client. Follow in the VMware documentation for more information.

      2. Convert the VM in the vSphere client from a VM to template. Follow Convert a Virtual Machine to a Template in the vSphere Client in the VMware documentation for more information.

      Additional resources

      Scheduling an update for virtual hardware on vSphere

      Virtual hardware updates can be scheduled to occur when a virtual machine is powered on or rebooted. You can schedule your virtual hardware updates exclusively in vCenter by following Schedule a Compatibility Upgrade for a Virtual Machine in the VMware documentation.

      When scheduling an upgrade prior to performing an upgrade of OKD, the virtual hardware update occurs when the nodes are rebooted during the course of the OKD upgrade.