Hyperic HQ EE under tcruntime 2.1.0?

What is the upgrade path for Hyperic HQ under the new tcruntime 2.1.0? Under 2.0.0 you could download an installer bundle that had Hyperic HQ, the Hyperic Agent, and tcruntime. You could also download a "managed" node that had tcruntime and the agent. I know the "managed node" version has gone away now, I get that. I just don't get what we're supposed to do to "upgrade" Hyperic to go along with the tcruntime 2.1.0 or where we're supposed to get the agent to upgrade with.

I should say, yes we're using the official, commercial version of tcruntime. We have *not* purchased Hyperic as a separate product however.

Hi Dodgson,

"What is the upgrade path for Hyperic HQ under the new tcruntime 2.1.0?"

The doc for upgrade is here:
http://static.springsource.com/proje...html/ch08.html


"I just don't get what we're supposed to do to "upgrade" Hyperic to go along with the tcruntime 2.1.0 or where we're supposed to get the agent to upgrade with."

The packaging is simpler now. The tcRuntime (Tomcat) portion is in one package, and the Hyperic HQ server in another package. The agent is in a third package.

• tcRuntime
• Hyperic HQ Server
• Hyperic HQ Agent

So you grab the package(s) you need.

To upgrade the HQ Server grab the HQ 4.5 Server download and follow the upgrade instructions. Then you can "push" an agent upgrade directly from the HQ dashboard, or you can upgrade the agent manually by installing the 4.5 agent and removing the older agent.

To upgrade the tcRuntime, see the instructions in the doc here:



If you have any issues let me know, and please use our support portal.

I get that part. I understand that the agent isn't "part" of the download for tcruntime anymore. That there isn't a "special" HQ/agent or "managed node" download now. What I'm getting at is where do you get the "equivalent" of the HQ EE that "comes with" tcruntime 2.0.x, but for using with tcruntime 2.1.x? I know you can download the "basic" version of HQ and the agent at the Hyperic site, but I'm guessing (maybe I'm wrong) that you would lose functionality if you tried to use that (since you'd be going from EE down to Open Source Edition). The documentation isn't very clear and I'm not finding anything in the support portal. I do have a ticket open over there. I was just trying to share the knowledge with other commercial users without them having to dig around and/or wait for a ticket to be resolved like I am. To be fair, support is good about getting back to you quickly. Just "covering the bases" here.

No worries. Sorry for the confusion. The forum is a fine place to discuss this, I just didn't want you to have to wait for me to reply to get help...

Starting now with HQ 4.5 there is only one distribution of HQ EE. So customers who are licensed for tcServer should see both "SpringSource tcServer Subscription" and "Hyperic HQ Server Subscription" under the licensed downloads are of the customer portal. (see screen capture attachment).

So today and going forward there is no "equivalent" of HQ EE for tcServer. There is just HQ EE and it ships with the tcServer plugin included.

Hope that helps,
Dan

But if we haven't explicitly purchased HQ as a separate product, then what? What I mean is, there was an HQ that "comes with" tcruntime under 2.0.0, but I know there is/was *also* HQ as a separate product. I do get that there's no distinction now, that the one was a "special" packaging of HQ for Spring, but that with the new HQ that's already bundled.

If you haven't explicitly bought HQ EE, then are you supposed to just "upgrade" using the plain open-source HQ? If that's true, then don't you lose the "EE" functionality? Or is there some download on the products page (within the support portal) that I'm missing maybe? I know we don't have a "Hyperic HQ Subscription" like you show in the picture.

"But if we haven't explicitly purchased HQ as a separate product, then what?"

tcServer includes HQ EE in its license. If you purchase tcServer, you get HQ EE to manage/monitor your tcServer platforms.

"What I mean is, there was an HQ that "comes with" tcruntime under 2.0.0, but I know there is/was *also* HQ as a separate product. I do get that there's no distinction now, that the one was a "special" packaging of HQ for Spring, but that with the new HQ that's already bundled."

Yes - HQ EE comes with tcServer - for those platforms where you run tcServer.

Yes - HQ EE is also licensed separately to monitor other platforms.

The download is the same in both cases. What will differ is your license key.

For example: If you have ten platforms running tcServer you will get a license key that allows HQ EE to monitor those ten platforms where you have licenses tcServer. If you also have four platforms running databases that you want to monitor, then you add four licenses of HQ EE to your ten of tcServer. You will get a license key from support for fourteen platforms of HQ EE. Ten of those are for the tcServer platforms and four for the non-tcServer platforms.



"If you haven't explicitly bought HQ EE, then are you supposed to just "upgrade" using the plain open-source HQ?"

No. You get HQ EE included with tcServer - to monitor your platforms where tcServer is running.

Hope that helps,
Dan

Yes, that explains it, thanks! :) Just one more thing then, I don't get where we get the HQ EE download from then. The only way I can find to it is the 30 day demo version at hyperic.com and I'm presuming (could be wrong) that that's not what we want?

We made a global change today to add VFabric Hyperic 4.5 to the downloads area for all existing tcServer customers. (see screenshot).

You do not need to grab it from the eval area, and you do not need to grab it from hyperic.com. You can download it now under your licensed downloads area in the SpringSource account portal.

Dan

Cool, thought I was going crazy for a while there, not seeing where to get this! :) Can I ask you one or two more things sort of related to this? The directions are a little bit vague in the documentation. By the way (should have said this sooner so it'll help people more), we're on 4.2.0.7-EE for the HQ version right now, pre-upgrade.

http://static.springsource.com/proje...html/ch08.html

Do I have to stop any/all of my tcruntime 2.0.x instances in order to upgrade the HQ?

Do I have to stop any/all of my agents to upgrade the HQ? (I know you can push the upgrade of agents out from HQ)

Do I *have to* upgrade the agents at all, or can I do those "gradually", as I have time? Assuming I'm not running any tcruntime 2.1 instances yet.

Do I *have to* upgrade the tcruntimes at all (assuming I don't care about the new functionality) or can I do those gradually as we can pass them through QA?

So if I'm following this right, all I have to do is

stop the HQ (leaving all tcruntimes and all agents going),
run the HQ upgrade (as in the setup.sh -upgrade)
start that up again
go in HQ to each agent's view and issue "Upgrade" commands

Then I'm done, right? Then I can just, at my leisure, go and upgrade tcruntimes from 2.0 to 2.1 as QA approves each, right? Sorry for all these questions, I'm just trying to get a better feel for how much of a disruption this process has to be to production. Our people won't care much about not having HQ for an hour, but it would be a *huge* problem if I have to shutdown/restart any production tcruntimes to do this upgrade (need maintenance window then).

One last "admin" question, is there a roll-back for this HQ and agent upgrade? If something happens (we get a disk crash or one of our webapps blows up suddenly or something) and we want to undo this upgrade, then what? I'm guessing we need to be sure to back up everything before starting and if there's a problem stop everything, copy the old stuff back in place, and start everything again?