Updating the Appliance

Overview

Starting from Nexthink V6.6, the Appliance offers a simplified auto-update mechanism that requires minimal intervention. For a stricter control over the moment of the update, manual updates are still possible. Whether automated or manual, not only does the new update mechanism update all your Appliances at once, but also provides updates for the Finder and the Collector.

When updating from Nexthink V6.5 or a previous version, update of your Appliances as usual, using either the online or the offline update described below. At the end of the process, your updated Appliances get into an intermediate state called compatibility mode. In compatibility mode, you can still work and update your Appliances individually. Federate your Appliances to enable the new update mechanism, along with many other advantages.

When updating from Nexthink V6.16 or a previous version to V6.17 or above, the Appliance undertakes a process of content centralization, during which most of the content that was previously local to each Engine becomes shared by all Engines. The centralization of content offers users a unified experience across all Engines when connecting to them with the Finder, without the need to manually export and import content from one Engine to each other.

Automatic updates

The automatic update of the Appliances helps you maintain your Nexthink software up-to-date in a centralized and comfortable way. For V6.6 and later, this is the preferred method to update your Appliances. Choose the day of the week and the hour of the day when updating your Portal and Engines is more convenient for you. The automatic update requires your Appliances to be federated.

To enable the automatic update of your Appliances:

Log in to Web Console of the Appliance that hosts the Portal (the primary) as admin. In your browser, type the following URL:
https://<portal.dns.or.ip>:99
Click the Appliance tab at the top of the window.
Select the section Update from the left-hand side menu.
Tick the box Automatically update Nexthink Appliance and installed components, the subsection Update on shows up below with a couple of selection lists.
1. Select the day of the week when you want to do the update. Choose the default value any day if you do not have a preferred day.
2. Select the hour of the day when you want the update to start. Choose the default value any time if you do not have a preferred time.

At least one week must have passed between the availability of the update and the actual update of your Appliances. For instance, if you selected your preferred day of the update to be on Friday, and the update is available since Wednesday, the actual update will take place on Friday of the next week.

Online update

If your appliances have access to the Internet, this is the recommended method to update Nexthink whenever automatic updates are not enabled:

Log in to the Web Console of the Appliance to update as administrator. In your browser, type the following URL:
https://<appliance.dns.or.ip>:99
- In V6.6 or later, if your Appliances are federated, log in to the Appliance that hosts the Portal to centrally manage the update process of all your Appliances (Portal and Engines).
In the section Appliance, select the tab Update. If your Appliances are federated, this tab is available in the Portal Appliance only.
Optional: Click the circular arrows in the Last check for update row to see if there is a new system update or any update of the installed Nexthink components: Portal, Engine or Web Console. If there is any update available, it is displayed in the cell on the right hand side. For each released component, find here a direct link to its release notes.
Optional: Check the box Enable of the Automatic update row to get the updates from the Nexthink repository as soon as they are published.
Optional: Press the button Start connectivity test to verify your connection to the Nexthink repository (updates.nexthink.com). If the repository is reachable, a message of success is displayed.
Click the button Start update to trigger the update process. By the end stages of the update, the Web Console shows its new user interface.
Wait for the message Everything is up-to-date. The update of the Appliance has been completed.

Some updates require rebooting the Appliance to be complete. Refer to the chapter on rebooting the Appliance below for more information.

Offline update

The Appliance relies on yum to manage the upgrade of its components. When the appliance is connected to the Internet, the Web Console instructs the yum utility to get the upgrades from the Nexthink repository. In the case that your appliances are not connected to the Internet, you must download the offline update package and, if there is any system update, the Appliance ISO. You must then manually update the Appliance using yum from the command line.

If the Appliance ISO of a particular version of Nexthink is not yet available for download, but the offline update package is already downloadable and you need to install it, ensure at least that you update your appliances to the latest available ISO (usually the ISO of the previous version) before updating the rest of the Nexthink components.

The Appliance ISO contains the operating system, the Web Console, other auxiliary packages, and the security updates for the Appliance; whereas the offline update package is a tgz file that holds the Nexthink components: Portal, Engine, Finder, and Collector. For updating each one of your appliances offline, follow the steps below.

Applying system updates

To manually update the system packages of each CentOS Appliance with yum and the Appliance ISO:

Attach the Appliance ISO to the physical or virtual host system.
Log into the Appliance Command Line Interface (CLI).

Mount the ISO with the following commands:

BASH

sudo mkdir -p /media/cdrom
sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

Update the system packages; ignore any messages about package already installed:

BASH

sudo rpm -Uvh /media/cdrom/CentOS/centos-release-*.rpm
sudo yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=c7-media --nogpgcheck \--exclude=nxconsole update

Wait for the operation to finish.
Run the following command to disconnect the ISO from the system:
BASH
```
sudo umount /media/cdrom
```

Prerequisite for the following steps:
You must be on at least version 6.30.19.1 to run the offline upgrade procedure.

To manually update the system packages of each Oracle Linux 8 Appliance with yum and the Appliance ISO:

Attach the Appliance ISO to the physical or virtual host system.
Log into the Appliance CLI.
Run the following script:
BASH
```
sudo /opt/bin/offline-update.sh
```

If the system updates include a modification to the operating system kernel, reboot the Appliance to load the new kernel. Do this for both CentOS and Oracle Linux 8 Appliances. Refer to the rebooting the Appliance section in this documentation.

Updating Engine, Portal and Web Console

To manually update the Nexthink components of each Appliance:

Connect to the corresponding Appliance to update with your favorite SCP client and copy the offline update package (tgz file) to /home/nexthink/. Make sure that you copy the offline update package and not the offline installation package. The latter is designed for a clean install only, not for an update.

Untar the offline update package:

BASH

tar -xzvf Nexthink-offline-update-6.x.tgz

Ensure that the installation script is executable:
BASH
```
sudo chmod a+x install_Nexthink_v6.sh
```
Run the installation script:
BASH
```
sudo ./install_Nexthink_v6.sh
```
Log in to the Web Console as administrator.
Check that the update was correctly completed by verifying the versions of the installed components in the Information tab of the Appliance section.

Verifying the running version of the Appliance

To verify the version of the Appliance and of the installed components that are currently running on your machine:

Log in to the Web Console.
In the APPLIANCE tab, select General from the left-hand side menu.
Find the versions of the installed components on the table under Versions.

The versions displayed in the Web Console must match the versions advertised in the Release Notes of the corresponding update. Check the update process otherwise.

Rebooting the Appliance

Usually, you do not need to reboot the Appliance after an update. In the case of system updates that install a new kernel for the operating system, however, it is necessary to reboot the Appliance to load the new kernel. This condition will be made clear in the release notes of the update.

To reboot the Appliance after an update:

Log in to the Web Console as administrator.
In the Appliance section, select the General tab.
Under Status, click the button REBOOT APPLIANCE.
To the question Are you sure you want to reboot the Appliance?, answer by clicking OK.

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