Product Documentation
Application Delivery Management
14.1 - Current Release 13.1 13.0
View PDF

Use jobs to upgrade Citrix ADC instances

December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

You can use Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM) to upgrade one or more Citrix ADC instances. You must know the licensing framework and types of licenses before you upgrade an instance.

When you upgrade your Citrix ADC instance by creating a maintenance job, perform the pre-validation check on the instances that you want to upgrade.

  1. Check for customizations - Back up your customizations and delete them from the instances. You can reapply the backed-up customizations after the instance upgrade.

  2. Check the disk usage - If the /var folder has less than 6 GB space and the /flash folder has less than 200 MB space, clean up the disk space. Check the following folder paths to clean the disk space:

    • /var/nstrace
    • /var/log
    • /var/nslog
    • /var/tmp/support
    • /var/core
    • /var/crash
    • /var/nsinstall
    • /var/netscaler/nsbackup

  3. Check for disk hardware issues - Resolve the hardware issues if any.

You can upgrade an ADC HA pair in two stages:

  1. Create an upgrade job and run on one of the nodes immediately or schedule later.

  2. Schedule the upgrade job to run on the remaining node later. Ensure to schedule this job after the initial node’s upgrade.

When you upgrade an ADC HA pair, note the following:

  • The secondary node is upgraded first.

  • Synchronization and propagation of the nodes are disabled until both the nodes are upgraded successfully.

  • After the successful HA pair upgrade, an error message appears in the execution history. This message appears if your nodes in the HA pair are on different builds or versions. This message indicates that synchronization between primary and secondary node is disabled.

When you upgrade an ADC cluster, the ADM does pre-upgrade validation on the specified instance only. Before you upgrade, check and resolve customization, disk usage, and hardware issues on the cluster nodes.

Create an upgrade maintenance job to upgrade ADC instances

Note

ADC upgrade from higher version to lower version is not supported. For example, if your Citrix ADC instance is 13.0 82.x, you cannot downgrade the ADC instance to 13.0 79.x or any other earlier versions.

  1. In Citrix ADM, navigate to Networks > Configuration Jobs > Maintenance Jobs. Click the Create Job button.

    Create maintenance job

  2. In Create Maintenance Jobs, select Upgrade Citrix ADC (Standalone/High-Availability/Cluster) and click Proceed.

    Select upgrade maintenance job

  3. In Select Instance, type a name of your choice for Job Name.

  4. Click Add Instances to add ADC instances that you want to upgrade.

    • To upgrade an HA pair, specify the IP address of either a primary or secondary node.

    • To upgrade a cluster, specify the cluster IP address.

  5. Click Next to start the pre-upgrade validation on the selected instances.

    The Pre-upgrade validation tab displays the failed instances. you can remove the failed instances and click Next.

    If you face insufficient disk space on an instance, you can check and clean up the disk space. See, Clean up ADC disk space.

    Important

    If you specify cluster IP address, the ADM does pre-upgrade validation only on the specified instance not on the other cluster nodes.

  6. Optional, in Custom scripts, specify the scripts to run before and after an instance upgrade. Use one of the following ways to run the commands:

    The custom scripts are used to check the changes before and after an ADC instance upgrade. For example:

    • The instance version before and after the upgrade.
    • The status of interfaces, high-availability nodes, virtual servers, and services before and after upgrade.
    • The statistics of virtual servers and services.
    • The dynamic routes.

    An instance upgrade has multiple stages. You can now specify these scripts to run in the following stages:

    • Pre upgrade: The specified script runs before upgrading an instance.

    • Post upgrade pre failover (applicable for HA): This stage only applies to the high-availability deployment. The specified script runs after upgrading the nodes, but before their failover.

    • Post upgrade (applicable for standalone) / Post upgrade post failover (applicable for HA): The specified script runs after upgrading an instance in the standalone deployment. In the high-availability deployment, the script runs after upgrading the nodes and their failover.

    Note

    Ensure to enable script execution at the required stages. Otherwise, the specified scripts do not run.

    You can import a script file or type commands directly in the ADM GUI.

    • Import commands from file: Select the command input file from your local computer.
    • Type commands: Enter commands directly on the GUI.

    In the post upgrade stages, you can use the same script specified in the pre-upgrade stage.

    Custom scripts

  7. In Schedule Task, select one of the following options:

    • Upgrade now - The upgrade job runs immediately.

    • Schedule Later - Select this option to run this upgrade job later. Specify the Execution Date and Start Time when you want to upgrade the instances.

      If you want to upgrade an ADC HA pair in two stages, select Perform two stage upgrade for nodes in HA.

      Specify the Execution Date and Start Time when you want to upgrade another instance in the HA pair.

  8. In Create Job, specify the following details:

    1. Select one of the following options from the Software Image list:

      • Local - Select the instance upgrade file from your local machine.

      • Appliance - Select the instance upgrade file from an ADM file browser. The ADM GUI displays the instance files that are present at /var/mps/ns_images.

    2. Specify when you want to upload the image to an instance:

      • Upload now - Select this option to upload the image immediately. However, the upgrade job runs at the scheduled time.

      • Upload at the time of execution - Select this option to upload the image at the time of upgrade job execution.

    • Clean software image from Citrix ADC on successful upgrade - Select this option to clear the uploaded image in the ADC instance after the instance upgrade.

    • Backup the ADC instances before starting the upgrade. - Creates a backup of the selected ADC instances.

    • Maintain the primary and secondary status of HA nodes after upgrade: Select this option if you want the upgrade job to initiate a failover after each node’s upgrade. In this way, the upgrade job maintains the primary and secondary status of the nodes.

    • Save ADC configuration before starting the upgrade - Saves the running ADC configuration before upgrading the ADC instances.

    • Enable ISSU to avoid network outage on ADC HA pair - ISSU ensures the zero downtime upgrade on an ADC high-availability pair. This option provides a migration functionality that honors the existing connections during upgrade. So, you can upgrade an ADC HA pair without downtime. Specify the ISSU migration timeout in minutes.

    • Receive Execution Report through email - Sends the execution report in email. To add an email distribution list, see Create an email distribution list.

    • Receive Execution Report through slack - Sends the execution report in slack. To add a Slack profile, see Create a Slack profile.

    Create upgrade job and upload image to ADC

  9. Click Create Job.

The upgrade job appears in the Networks > Configuration job > Maintenance Jobs. When you edit an existing job, you can switch to any tabs if the required fields are already filled. For example, if you are in the Select Configuration tab, you can switch to the Job Preview tab.

Clean up the ADC disk space

If you face the insufficient disk space issue while upgrading an ADC instance, clean up the disk space from the ADM GUI itself.

  1. In the Pre-upgrade validation tab, select the instance that has the disk space issue.

  2. Select Check Disk Space.

    This pane displays the instance’s disk that has low space. It also displays how much memory is used and available on the disk.

  3. In the Check Disk Space pane, select the instance that requires cleanup.

  4. Click Disk Cleanup.

    Disk cleanup

  5. Select the files that you want to erase.

  6. Click Delete

Download a consolidated diff report of an ADC upgrade job

You can download a diff report of an ADC upgrade job if custom scripts are specified. A diff report contains the differences between the outputs of the pre-upgrade and post-upgrade script. With this report, you can determine what changes occurred on the ADC instance post upgrade.

Note

The diff report is generated only if you specify the same script in the pre-upgrade and post-upgrade stages.

To download a diff report of an upgrade job, do the following:

  1. Navigate to Networks > Configuration Jobs > Maintenance Jobs.

  2. Select the upgrade job for which you want to download a diff report.

  3. Click Diff Reports.

  4. In Diff Reports, download a consolidated diff report of the selected upgrade job.

    In this page, you can download any of the following diff reports type:

    • Pre vs Post upgrade pre failover diff report
    • Pre vs Post upgrade diff report

    Download a diff report of an ADC upgrade job

Use jobs to upgrade Citrix ADC instances
December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C
December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

In this article

Site feedback | Your privacy choices footer linkYour Privacy Choices | Privacy and legal terms | Cookie preferences | Consent settings | docs.cloud.com
© 1999- Cloud Software Group, Inc. All rights reserved.