CA Release Automation Upgrade Consideration

Products

• CA Release Automation - Release Operations Center (Nolio)
• CA Release Automation - DataManagement Server (Nolio)

Issue/Introduction

We want to upgrade CARA in our infrastructure from 6.4 version to 6.7 version. Can we have the relevant documents with us and some guidance to be consider for smooth upgrade.

Environment

Release : 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6

Component : CA RELEASE AUTOMATION RELEASE OPERATIONS CENTER

Resolution

Please find some documents which will be a good reference point for various scenarios with respect to maintaining Release Automation (RA) components.

Important Documents:

• Recommended Links
  • Best Practices Guide prior to Release Automation upgrade
  • Best Practice Guide for Logs collection and configuring retention count

• Self-Help/Troubleshooting guide
  • Nexus Repository Upgrade Query
  • Issue with Execution Server post upgrade

General Upgrade Path (Recommended)

• The upgrade path for CA Release Automation from 6.4 to 6.7 need to follow the path 6.4 -> 6.6 -> 6.7.
• The upgrade path for CA Release Automation from 6.5 to 6.7 need to follow the path 6.5 -> 6.6 -> 6.7.
  
• The upgrade path for CA Release Automation from prior versions would first need to upgrade to 6.4, then 6.6, then finally 6.7.

Why: There is no problem in version 6.7 but there are some underlying changes in 6.6 over which 6.7 is built and enhanced. So anything less than version 6.6 we asked our customer to first touch base at version 6.6 and from there move to version 6.7

NAC and NES upgrade

• All the NAC and NES should be upgraded and be on the same version.

Note: In case if RA Nexus repository is installed standalone, you need to upgrade it separately running installer like nolio_repository_*.sh/exe. If it is installed on NAC server itself while upgrading the NAC it will be upgraded automatically.

Agent Upgrade

• Agents can be upgraded slowly as there is no urgency and agents of old version will work with new versions of NAC and NES.
• Agents upgrade urgency arise, only in case if an issue observed on an agent which is already addressed in 6.6 cumulative or 6.7 in which case an agent upgrade will be must. 

The agent upgrade require some assessment the optimal path is to upgrade agents to version 6.6 and than upgrade to version 6.7. However as in large environment there are thousands of agent and it is not viable to upgrade all agents is time consuming and tedious.

To get tailored recommendation for your specific needs we request to share some additional information mentioned below with Technical support and they will be able to recommend you optimal agent upgrade paths you can consider for upgrading agents.

Additional information requested for reviewing agent upgrade path

1. 1. How agents are distributed among OS? (example, How many Windows, Linux, Solaris etc agents)
   2. What portion of agents are on which specific version for example version 5.5, 6.5, 6.4 etc.?
   3. Are there any agents which are very specific and have some 3rd party integration configuration and certificates, SSL certs etc? (any count and OS details will be helpful)