Upgrading DataStax Enterprise (DSE) 5.1 to 6.9

In multiple datacenter clusters, upgrade every node in one datacenter before upgrading another datacenter.

Upgrade the seed nodes within a datacenter first.

DSE Analytics datacenters

Transactional/DSE Graph datacenters

DSE Search nodes or datacenters

Change all use of HTTP API writes to instead use CQL commands for updates and inserts.

Edit the search index config and make these changes as needed. See Search index config for valid options to change query behavior for search indexes.

Ensure the presence of the catalina.properties and context.xml files in the Tomcat conf directory.

If earlier DSE versions use a custom configuration for the Solr UI web.xml, change:

<filter-class>com.datastax.bdp.search.solr.auth.DseAuthenticationFilter</filter-class>

<filter-class>com.datastax.bdp.cassandra.auth.http.DseAuthenticationFilter</filter-class>

The StallMetrics MBean is removed.

If you programmatically set the shuffle parameter, you must change the code for applications that use conf.set("spark.shuffle.service.port", port). Instead, use dse spark-submit which automatically sets the correct service port based on the authentication state. See Configuring Apache Spark™ for more information.

If DSEFS is enabled, copy the CFS hivemetastore directory to DSEFS:

DSE_HOME/bin/dse hadoop fs -cp cfs://node_ip_address/user/spark/warehouse/ dsefs://node_ip_address/user/spark/warehouse/

Remove Cassandra File System (CFS). Remove the cfs and cfs_archive keyspaces before upgrading. Review the From CFS to DSEFS blog post and the Copying data from CFS to DSEFS documentation.

cqlsh> DROP KEYSPACE cfs

cqlsh> DROP KEYSPACE cfs_archive

Make sure any use of the SPARK_LOCAL_DIRS and SPARK_EXECUTOR_DIRS environment variables match their use as described in Set environment variables.

For applications to use the compatible Spark Jobserver API in the DataStax repository, migrate jobs that extend from SparkHiveJob and SparkSqlJob to SparkSessionJob. See the DemoSparkSessionJob example in the demos directory.

Upgrade to the latest patch release on your current version. The latest patch release includes fixes that can simplify the upgrade process.

$ bin/dse -v
current_dse_version

Familiarize yourself with the changes and features in the new release:

Before upgrading, be sure that each node has adequate free disk space.

$ sudo du -sh /var/lib/cassandra/data/

3.9G	/var/lib/cassandra/data/

$ sudo df -hT /

Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      ext4   59G   16G   41G  28% /

Replace ITriggers and custom interfaces.

There is no longer support for Thrift-compatible tables (COMPACT STORAGE). Before upgrading, migrate all non-system tables that have COMPACT STORAGE to CQL table format:

$ cqlsh -e 'DESCRIBE FULL SCHEMA;' > schema_file

cat schema_file | while read -d $';\n' line ; do
  if echo "$line"|grep 'COMPACT STORAGE' 2>&1 > /dev/null ; then
    TBL="`echo $line|sed -e 's|^CREATE TABLE \([^ ]*\) .*$|\1|'`"
    if echo "$TBL"|egrep -v '^system' 2>&1 > /dev/null; then
      echo "ALTER TABLE $TBL DROP COMPACT STORAGE;" >> schema-drop-list
    fi
  fi
done

$ cqlsh -f schema-drop-list

Upgrade the SSTables on each node to ensure that all SSTables are on the current version:

$ nodetool upgradesstables

Ensure that keyspace replication factors are correct for your environment:

$ cqlsh --execute "DESCRIBE KEYSPACE keyspace-name;" | grep "replication"
CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace-name WITH replication = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy, 'replication_factor': '3'}  AND durable_writes = true;

Verify the Java runtime version and upgrade to the recommended version.

$ java -version

java version "11.0.x" YYYY-MM-DD LTS
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 18.9 (build 11.0.x+xx-LTS-219)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 18.9 (build 11.0.x+xx-LTS-219, mixed mode)

Verify the Python version and upgrade to the recommended version.

Run nodetool repair to ensure that data on each replica is consistent with data on other nodes:

$ nodetool repair -pr

Install the libaio package for optimal performance.

$ sudo yum install libaio

$ sudo apt-get install libaio1

Back up any customized configuration files since they may be overwritten with default values during installation of the new version.

Flush the commit log of the current installation:

$ nodetool drain

Stop the node:

Use the appropriate method to install the new product version on a supported platform:

To configure the new version:

When upgrading DSE to versions earlier than 5.1.16, 6.0.8, or 6.7.4 inclusive, if any tables are using DSE Tiered Storage, remove all txn_compaction log files from second-level tiers and lower. For example, given the following dse.yaml configuration, remove txn_compaction log files from /mnt2 and /mnt3 directories:

tiered_storage_options:
    strategy1:
        tiers:
            - paths:
                - /mnt1
            - paths:
                - /mnt2
            - paths:
                - /mnt3

find /mnt2 -name "*_txn_compaction_*.log" -type f -delete &&
find /mnt3 -name "*_txn_compaction_*.log" -type f -delete

Remove any previously installed JTS JAR files from the CLASSPATHS in your DSE installation. JTS (Java Topology Suite) is distributed with DSE 6.7.

Start the node.

Verify that the upgraded datacenter names match the datacenter names in the keyspace schema definition:

Review the logs for warnings, errors, and exceptions:

$ grep -w 'WARNING\|ERROR\|exception' /var/log/cassandra/*.log

Repeat the upgrade process on each node in the cluster following the recommended Upgrade order.

After the entire cluster upgrade is complete: upgrade the SSTables on one node at a time or, when using racks, one rack at a time.

$ nodetool upgradesstables

If you use the OpsCenter Repair Service, turn it on.

If you encounter serialization-header errors, stop the node and repair them using the sstablescrub -e option:

$ sstablescrub -e fix-only keyspace table

Starting with DSE 6.7, the system automatically enables DSE Metrics Collector. This is a diagnostics information aggregator that helps facilitate DSE problem resolution. For more information on the DSE Metrics Collector, or to disable metrics collection, see DataStax Enterprise Metrics Collector.

The system no longer uses appender SolrValidationErrorAppender and the logger SolrValidationErrorLogger which you may safely remove from logback.xml.

In contrast to earlier versions, DataStax recommends accepting the new default value of 1024 for back_pressure_threshold_per_core in dse.yaml. See Tuning Search for maximum indexing throughput.

Do a full reindex of all encrypted search indexes on each node in your cluster:

$ dsetool reload_core keyspace_name.table_name distributed=false reindex=true deleteAll=true

Check the replication factor for the dse_analytics keyspace, a new keyspace that stores all DSE Analytics internal system data. DataStax recommends setting the replication strategy to NetworkTopologyStrategy (NTS) with a replication factor of at least 3 in each of DSE Analytics datacenters. If a datacenter has more nodes, consider setting a larger replication factor.

$ cqlsh --execute "DESCRIBE KEYSPACE dse_analytics;" | grep "replication"
CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace-name WITH replication = {'class': 'replication-strategy, 'datacenter-name': 'replication-factor'};

If you are using Spark SQL tables, migrate them to the new Hive metastore format:

$ dse client-tool spark metastore migrate --from 5.1.0 --to 6.9.0

Spark Jobserver uses DSE custom version 0.8.0.56. Ensure that applications use the compatible Spark Jobserver API from the DataStax repository.

Install yum-versionlock (one-time operation):

sudo yum install yum-versionlock

Lock the current DSE version:

sudo yum versionlock dse-*