Updating Base Distribution Software

The decision about if and when to update RHEL-clone base distribution software is complex and needs to be made by a local cluster administrator, ranging from never updating anything on the cluster to updating frequently.

Production clusters in constant use commonly have regular update schedules, typically ranging from weekly to quarterly. The cluster administrator should track the RHEL-clone release notifications as well as the ICE ClusterWare™ release notifications to determine which security fixes, bug fixes, and feature enhancements merit disrupting normal cluster operations in order to perform an update or a group of updates.

Base distribution software updates on a schedule managed by the distributor (e.g., Red Hat). RHEL-clone versioning consists of two dot-separated numbers that define a major release and minor release. See Supported Distributions and Features for details about what the ClusterWare platform supports on head nodes and compute nodes.

Various package releases can occur for a given major.minor release, and those patch releases are generally compatible with other software in the same major.minor release, which means a node can generally update patch release packages as desired. However, a kernel or device driver update may potentially require relinking of 3rd-party software. These patch releases typically include security fixes, bug fixes, and backward-compatible feature enhancements. See the distributors' documentation for details.

A minor release update generally entails a larger number of packages, and those packages need to be updated as a group in order to guarantee interoperability. Before updating to a new minor release the cluster administrator should confirm that the 3rd-party software intended to be in use is compatible with that particular major.minor base distribution. A minor release commonly includes a new kernel with substantial changes, and that commonly requires 3rd-party device software to be relinked. See the distributors' documentation for details.

A major release update always entails a large number of packages and usually changes of some degree to user and application interfaces. Commonly there is no simple updating from one major release to another, and an administrator commonly needs to perform a fresh install of the new distribution. Before updating to a new major release the cluster administrator should confirm that the intended 3rd-party software is supported by that major release. See the distributors' documentation for details.

Important

The ClusterWare build version (e.g., el7, el8, or el9, combined with x86_64 or aarch64) must match the base distribution's major release and hardware platform.