How to Upgrade RHEL/CentOS 7 to 8 with EDR Installed

Products

• Carbon Black EDR (formerly Cb Response)

Issue/Introduction

How to upgrade RHEL/CentOS 7 to 8 with the EDR version 7.x installed.

Environment

• EDR Server: 7.x
• RHEL/CentOS: 7.x
• RHEL/CentOS: 8.x

Resolution

Instead of a RHEL upgrade on the same server, a second server is required. The critical EDR v7.x files are copied from the RHEL 7.x server to the RHEL 8.x server.

1. Review the VMware Carbon Black EDR Server/Cluster Management Guide first. Specifically, the Backup, Install and Restore sections. 
2. Backup the EDR 7.x files on the RHEL 7.x server according to the Guide p. 42.
3. Create a second server with RHEL 8.x installed and registered.
4. Configure the RHEL 8.x server's hostname, IP address and DNS server to match the EDR 7.x server. 

   vi /etc/hosts
   vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface>

5. Install the instance's rpm on the RHEL 8 server.

   rpm -ivh <your instance>.rpm

6. Follow the Guide p 22-30. Disable a few modules prior to the cb-enterprise install.  Please note this is an update to the Guide. 
   • Server 7.4 and below

     • yum module disable -y postgresql redis python38

   • Server 7.5  

     • yum module disable -y postgresql redis python39
       

7. Install cb-enterprise on the RHEL 8.x server. 

   yum install cb-enterprise

8. Initialize the RHEL 8.x cb-enterprise, but do not start the services. 

   /usr/share/cb/cbinit

   • cbinit will go through the normal setup and will ask for username, email, password etc. Fill this out, it can be fake info as you will be restoring the old info in step 10.
9. Copy the EDR 7.x backup tar files to the RHEL 8.x server.
10. Follow the Guide p43 to restore the tar files on the RHEL 8.x server. The chcon commands on the /var/log/cb/redis are not expected to work since this EDR does not have log files yet.
11. Check the hostname, IP address and DNS one more time. 

    cat /etc/hosts
    cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface>

12. Disable the RHEL 7.x server's interface. 

    ifdown <interface>

13. Reboot the RHEL 8.x server with EDR 7.x installed and restored. The sensors will start reporting to the new server.  Connect to the EDR 7.x UI on the RHEL 8 server.