Planning your DataStax Enterprise upgrade

Minimize downtime and interim upgrade requirements.

DataStax driver changes

DataStax drivers come in two types:

  • DataStax drivers for DataStax Enterprise — for use by DSE 4.8 and later
  • DataStax drivers for Apache Cassandra™ — for use by Apache Cassandra™ and DSE 4.7 and earlier
Note: While the DataStax drivers for Apache Cassandra drivers can connect to DSE 5.0 and later clusters, DataStax strongly recommends upgrading to the DSE drivers. The DSE drivers provide functionality for all DataStax Enterprise features.

Repair service

Repairing nodes can be done with the OpsCenter Repair service or nodetool repair.
OpsCenter Repair service nodetool repair
6.7 DSE 6.7
6.5 DSE 6.0
6.1 DSE 5.1
6.0 Cassandra 3.0
5.2 Cassandra 2.1
5.1 Cassandra 2.1
5.0 Cassandra 2.0

The upgrade process for DataStax Enterprise provides minimal downtime (ideally zero). During this process, upgrade and restart one node at a time while other nodes continue to operate online. With a few exceptions, the cluster continues to work as though it were on the earlier version of DataStax Enterprise until all of the nodes in the cluster are upgraded.

Tip: DataStax is offering a complimentary half-day Upgrade Assessment. This assessment is a DataStax Services engagement designed to assess the upgrade compatibility of your existing DSE deployment to later DSE versions, including 5.1, 6.0, 6.7, and 6.8. Contact the DataStax Services team to schedule your assessment.
DSE 5.1 Search Customers
Because of differences in the process scheduler, memory models, and tuning capabilities between version 5.1 and 6.X, DataStax recommends that customers using DSE 5.1 Search remain on version 5.1.

Factors to consider when planning an upgrade:

Reduce risks
You can reduce risks and effort by employing a continual upgrade strategy to provide access to product improvements and new features and reduce version impacts. Ensure that you repair your nodes regularly. Node repair ensures that data on a replica is consistent with data on other nodes.
Version impacts
Upgrades are impacted by the version you are upgrading from and the version you are upgrading to. The greater the gap between the current version and the target version, the more complex the upgrade.
Note: Be sure to check driver compatibility. Depending on the driver version, you might need to recompile your client application code. See DataStax driver changes.
Upgrades from DSE 4.8 require an interim upgrade to DSE 5.0.
DataStax Installer End-of-life (EOL)
The DataStax Installer is not supported for DSE 6.0 and later. When DSE 5.1 or DSE 5.0 was installed with the DataStax Installer, you must first change from a standalone installer installation to tarball or package installation for the same DSE version before you can update to DSE 6.0 or later. See Upgrading to DSE 6.0 or DSE 6.7 from DataStax Installer installations.
Upgrade to the latest patch release on your current version

When upgrading to a major version, first upgrade to the latest patch release on your current version. Fixes included in the latest patch release can help or smooth the upgrade process.

Backup data

DataStax recommends backing up your data prior to any version upgrade, including logs and custom configurations. A backup provides the ability to revert and restore all the data used in the previous version if necessary.

Tip: OpsCenter provides a Backup Service that manages enterprise-wide backup and restore operations for DataStax Enterprise clusters. OpsCenter 6.5 and later is recommended.
Upgrade order
Upgrade order matters. Upgrade nodes in this order:
  1. In multiple datacenter clusters, upgrade every node in one datacenter before moving on to other datacenters.
  2. Upgrade the seed nodes within a datacenter first.
  3. Upgrade node types in this order:
    1. DSE Analytics nodes or datacenters.

      For DSE Analytics nodes using DSE Hadoop, upgrade the Job Tracker node first. Then upgrade Hadoop nodes, followed by Spark nodes.

    2. Transactional/DSE Graph nodes or datacenters.
    3. DSE Search nodes or datacenters.