Installation and Software Distribution

HP XC System Software is installed during the initial installation (new installation), described in the HP XC System Software Installation Guide. Periodically, later releases may require you to reinstall the system software or upgrade it from its most recent version. To determine whether the system software is a new installation or an upgrade, see “Determining the Installation Type”.

System software, third-party software, and individual files must be distributed to target nodes in the HP XC system. The section titled “Software Distribution” provides an overview of this topic.

Determining the Installation Type

It may be necessary to determine whether your system software is the result of a new installation or upgraded from a previous version. Use any of the following methods to do so:

• Run the shownode command to determine the existence of the xc_prev_version parameter.

  • The following example indicates that the HP XC system was upgraded from Version V3.0:

    # shownode config sysparams | grep prev xc_prev_version: V3.0

  • The absence of output in following example indicates that the HP XC system is a new installation:

    # shownode config sysparams | grep prev

• Verify the existence of the /var/log/preupgradesys directory. If this directory exists, the HP XC system was upgraded from a previous release. Otherwise, the system is a new installation.

Software Distribution

The HP XC system uses the SystemImager tool to synchronize the configuration of nodes across the cluster using image propagation. This simplifies installation of the initial software and upgrading software and configuration files. For more information, see Chapter 10: Distributing Software Throughout the System.