[slurm-users] [External] Slurm Upgrade Philosophy?

[Prentice Bisbal]

We generally upgrade within 1-2 maintenance windows of a new release 
coming out, so within a couple of months of the release being available. 
For minor updates, we update at the next maintenance window. At one 
point, we were stuck several release behind. Getting all caught up 
wasn't that bad. I think were were on 15.something and upgrading to 
17.11, or something like that.

For that upgrade, most of the work happened on the DB server, I upgraded 
one-at-a-time through each release until we were current on the SlurmDB, 
and then made a single upgrade to the latest version on the slurm 
controller and compute nodes.

Our Slurm DB is small, so the upgrade changes to the DB only took a few 
minutes per upgrade. For larger DBs, it can take hours per upgrade.

This is one reason people like to keep current with Slurm - it makes 
future upgrades that much easier. On maintenance window of only a couple 
hours is more palatable than a couple of days of downtime. Also, when 
you jump several updates, it's hard to tell when a new "feature" or 
"bug" was introduced, which makes identifying the source and 
fixing/understanding the new behavior that much harder.

Prentice

On 12/18/20 1:10 PM, Jason Simms wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Thanks to several helpful members on this list, I think I have a much 
> better handle on how to upgrade Slurm. Now my question is, do most of 
> you upgrade with each major release?
>
> I recognize that, normally, if something is working well, then don't 
> upgrade it! In our case, we're running 20.02, and it seems to be 
> working well for us. The notes for 20.11 don't indicate any "must 
> have" features for our use cases, but I'm still new to Slurm, so maybe 
> there is a hidden benefit I can't immediately see.
>
> Given that, I would normally not consider upgrading. But as I 
> understand it, you cannot upgrade more than two major releases back, 
> so if I skip this one, I'd have to upgrade to (presumably) 21.08, or 
> else I'd have to "double upgrade" if, e.g., I wanted to go from 20.02 
> to 22.05.
>
> To prevent that, do most people try to stay within the most recent two 
> versions? Or do you go as long as you possibly can with your existing 
> version, upgrading only if you absolutely must?
>
> Warmest regards,
> Jason
>
> -- 
> *Jason L. Simms, Ph.D., M.P.H.*
> Manager of Research and High-Performance Computing
> XSEDE Campus Champion
> Lafayette College
> Information Technology Services
> 710 Sullivan Rd | Easton, PA 18042
> Office: 112 Skillman Library
> p: (610) 330-5632

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