Reinstalling / Upgrading VirtuCache

UPGRADING VIRTUCACHE DRIVER
Upgrading or patching VirtuCache driver software requires you to completely uninstall the old version and reinstall the new version. Please follow the below steps to do so.

Step 1 : Either via VirtuCache GUI or CLI, pause caching on all hosts in the cluster, one host at a time. Before proceeding to the next host, make sure that caching is indeed paused on the current host you are working on. It is important that dirty write cache is flushed to backend storage, before you proceed to the next host.  Depending on the ‘Destaging Footprint’ on the host and the speed of your SAN, it might take upto 5 minutes for caching to stop on a host. When VirtuCache GUI (‘Hosts’ tab) shows caching as paused, then you know that the dirty write cache from the host has been successfully synced to backend storage and its write replicas deleted from other hosts.

To pause caching from the GUI. Goto to the Hosts tab > and click on the Pause Caching icon (screenshot below)

Repeat this process for all hosts in the cluster, one host at a time, in serial order.

Step 2.  Removing VirtuCache

Step 2(a): Put a host in maintenance mode.

Step 2(b): Then uninstall VirtuCache driver on each host by typing the below commands at esxcli
/etc/init.d/vnx2.sh stop
You might see errors like watchdog-vnx2.PID does not exist; or unable to terminate watchdog-vnx2; can’t remove vnxcli; can’t remove vnxd.conf; can’t remove vnx2; etc. Ignore these errors, the command does unload the VirtuCache driver.

Then type this command:
esxcli software vib remove -n vnx2
This will remove the VirtuCache driver.
A reboot is not required after uninstalling VirtuCache.

You can confirm if VirtuCache is uninstalled by typing the below command at esxcli. If you don’t see a vnx2 line in the output, then you know that VirtuCache has been removed from the ESXi host. You will still see the lic_vnx2 line, which refers to VirtuCache license, but let that be, since you don’t need to uninstall the license.

esxcli software vib list | grep vnx2

Step 2(c) Exit maintenance mode.

Do the steps 2(a), 2(b) and 2(c) for each host in the cluster, till VirtuCache is uninstalled from all hosts in the cluster. Only after VirtuCache is uninstalled from all hosts in the cluster that you proceed to Step 3 below.

Step 3: Installing the new VirtuCache driver.

Do not install VirtuCache with the host in maintenance mode. This sounds counterintuitive, but you must install VirtuCache with VMs running live on your hosts as they usually are (without doing any vmotions).

Step 3 (a): Install the new VirtuCache driver vib by running this command in esxcli.

esxcli software vib install -v "file:///vmfs/volumes/[datastore name]/vnx2-1.0-.*.vib"

where [datastore name] is the Datastore the vib has been copied to.

No reboot is required after VirtuCache is installed.

Step 3 (b): After you install the new VirtuCache driver, make sure that caching is ON by going to the ‘Hosts’ tab in the VirtuCache GUI.  Cache policy configuration for Datastores and VMs that was applied before the upgrade will be automatically reapplied, since VirtuCache saves the last known configuration.

Now repeat steps 3 (a) and 3(b) for each host in the cluster.

The VirtuCache license file doesn’t need to be reinstalled. The existing license file vib will work fine with all versions of VirtuCache.

UPGRADING VIRTUCACHE MANAGER
If you also need to upgrade VirtuCache manager, then delete the old VirtuCache manager VM and import the new VirtuCache Manager OVA.