Upgrading

How to upgrade HCL Workload Automation to the current version.

The graphic displays the typical flow of an upgrade procedure beginning with the upgrade of the Dynamic Workload Console, the installation of the new backup master domain manager, the switch of the old master domain manager to the new backup master domain manager, the installation of the new backup master domain manager, and the upgrade of the agents

Overview

When upgrading your HCL Workload Automation environment, it is a good practice to start with the upgrade of the Dynamic Workload Console first. If you upgrade the console to the new product version level, you can then use it to verify that your environment is working after upgrading the remaining components.

For information about supported upgrade paths from previous versions see https://help.hcltechsw.com/workloadautomation/v95/distrDDguides.html.

The basic upgrade procedure of the remaining components begins with upgrading the master domain manager database tables and then running the serverinst script to install a version 9.5 master domain manager configured as a backup. The installation process is able to detect the presence of an existing master domain manager and automatically configures the second one as the backup master domain manager. The new backup master domain manager is configured to point to the existing database instance. You then perform a switch with the previous version master domain manager, so that the newly installed backup master domain manager becomes the current active master domain manager. You then install a second master domain manager to act as the new backup master domain manager. Each master domain manager and backup master domain manager installation requires its own installation of WebSphere Application Server Liberty Base. The upgrade process concludes with upgrading agents. Agents can be upgraded with minimal disruption to scheduling activities.

To upgrade agents, use the twsinst command.

When upgrading, you can upgrade directly to the latest fix pack level, if available, by downloading the latest fix pack image, and launching one single command that automatically installs the latest product level. For more information, see Upgrading from the CLI.

If you are upgrading from a product version level lower than V9.3 Fix Pack 2, then ensure you do not use CONDSUCC when defining new object definitions. This is a reserved keyword and is for internal use only.

Using the new features introduced with the latest release creates new records in the database which are not compatible with previous versions and therefore you cannot roll back your environment to a previous version.

If you upgrade HCL Workload Automation to version 9.5 or later, and the HCL Workload Automation database was created with DB2, change the DB2 configuration parameter EXTENDED_ROW_SZ to ENABLE, or create a new buffer pool and table space with a page size of 16 kilobytes and migrate the tables to the new table space. For more information, see Error in upgrading the HCL Workload Automation database when using a DB2 database.

Before upgrading, ensure that you have stopped workload processing on the master domain manager.

Choosing how to upgrade your network

After upgrading the Dynamic Workload Console, there are different approaches to upgrading the remaining components in your HCL Workload Automation environment. Because HCL Workload Automation supports compatibility with earlier versions, after upgrading the console, you can decide to proceed with upgrading in one of the following ways, depending on the type of your network:

Top-down
Upgrade the backup master domain manager, then all domain managers, the master domain manager, and then progressively upgrade the agents. This order ensures that events involving folders are correctly managed by the master domain manager and sent to agents at a supported version level.

When you have a backup master domain manager at the V9.5 Fix Pack 2, but the master domain manager is still at a previous product version level, problems can occur when monitoring objects that support the definition in a folder such as, prompts, workstations, and resources, as well as objects that contain the workstation in their object identifier, for example, job streams. More specifically these objects are not displayed in the results of the monitoring query on the plan if you use filters in your query. To solve this problem, upgrade the master domain manager to the V9.5 Fix Pack 2 level and then run planman resynch.

Many of the new functions that are introduced in the current version become available for each agent as it is upgraded. The disadvantage is that the same functions are not available to all agents at the same time.
Bottom-up
Upgrade the agents first, and then upgrade the master domain manager and its backup. The new functions that are introduced in the current version are not available until the whole network is upgraded.
Note: Due to new support of the UPN Windows user, if you have Windows domain users that are defined in the logon fields as domain\username, after performing an upgrade to this version, update the Security file before starting the HCL Workload Automation instance. Insert the escape character '\' before the '\' character in the domain\username value. For example, if you use the MYDOMAIN\user1 value in the logon field, after the upgrade, in the Security file you must update the line in following way:
..............
logon=MYDOMAIN\\user1
...............

For details, see Configuring the Security File.