Upgrading agents

Upgrade your agents as new versions of Puppet Enterprise become available. The upgrade method you use depends on the agent operating system and the method used to install the agent.

• Upgrading Puppet Enterprise

The puppetlabs-puppet_agent module, available from the Forge, enables you to upgrade multiple agents at once. The module handles all the latest version to version upgrades.

When upgrading agents, first test the upgrade on a subset of agents, and after you verify the upgrade, upgrade remaining agents.

1. On your master, download and install the puppetlabs-puppet_agent module: puppet module install puppetlabs-puppet_agent
2. Configure the master to download the agent version you want to upgrade.
   1. In the console, click Classification, and in the PE Infrastructure group, select the PE Master group.
   2. On the Configuration tab, in the Add a new class field, enter pe_repo, and select the appropriate repo class from the list of classes.

      Repo classes are listed as pe_repo::platform::<AGENT_OS_VERSION_ARCHITECTURE>.

   3. Click Add class and commit changes.
   4. On your master, run Puppet to configure the newly assigned class: puppet agent -t

      The new repo is created in /opt/puppetlabs/server/data/packages/public/<PE VERSION>/<PLATFORM>/.

3. Click Classification, click Add group, specify options for a new upgrade node group, and then click Add.

   • Parent name — Select the name of the classification node group that you want to set as the parent to this group, in this case, All Nodes.

   • Group name —Enter a name that describes the role of this classification node group, for example, agent_upgrade.

   • Environment — Select the environment your agents are in.

   • Environment group — Do not select this option. 

4. Click the link to Add membership rules, classes, and variables.
5. On the Rules tab, create a rule to add the agents that you want to upgrade to this group, click Add Rule, and then commit changes.
   For example:

   • Fact — osfamily

   • Operator — =

   • Value — RedHat

6. Still in the agent upgrade group, click the Configuration tab, and in the Add new class field, add the puppet_agent class, and click Add class.
   If you don’t immediately see the class, click Refresh to update the classifier.

   Note: If you’ve changed the prefix parameter of the pe_repo class in your PE Master node group, set the puppet-agent source parameter of the upgrade group to https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/<Prefix>.
7. In the puppet_agent class, specify the version of the puppet-agent package version that you want to install, then commit changes.
   Parameter Value package_version The puppet-agent package version to install, for example 5.3.3.
8. On the agents that you're upgrading, run Puppet: /opt/puppet/bin/puppet agent -t

After the Puppet run, you can verify the upgrade with /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet --version

The master hosts a package repository used to install or upgrade agents in your infrastructure.

If you're using PE package management, the pe_repo, hosted on the master, is upgraded when you upgrade the master.

If you installed your agents with the installation script, you can use the same script to upgrade them.

1. SSH into the agent node you want to upgrade.
2. Run the upgrade command appropriate to the operating system.
   • Most *nix

     /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/bin/curl --cacert /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash
     

   • Mac OS X, Solaris, and AIX

     curl --cacert /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash		  

PE services restarts automatically after upgrade.

If you did not install your agents with the installation script, you can still use it to upgrade, but you must first configure your master to download the agent upgrade version.

1. Configure the master to download the agent version you want to upgrade.
   1. In the console, click Classification, and in the PE Infrastructure group, select the PE Master group.
   2. On the Configuration tab, in the Add a new class field, enter pe_repo, and select the appropriate repo class from the list of classes.

      Repo classes are listed as pe_repo::platform::<AGENT_OS_VERSION_ARCHITECTURE>.

   3. Click Add class and commit changes.
   4. On your master, run Puppet to configure the newly assigned class: puppet agent -t

      The new repo is created in /opt/puppetlabs/server/data/packages/public/<PE VERSION>/<PLATFORM>/.

2. Run the upgrade command appropriate to the operating system.
   • Most *nix

     /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/bin/curl --cacert /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash
     

   • Mac OS X, Solaris, and AIX

     curl --cacert /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash		  

PE services restarts automatically after upgrade.

If you used PE package management to install Windows agents, you can use the same method to upgrade them.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = {$true}; $webClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient; $webClient.DownloadFile('https://<MASTER HOSTNAME>:8140/packages/current/install.ps1', 'install.ps1'); .\install.ps1
			 

You can use the Windows agent .msi package to upgrade.

1. Download the appropriate new version of the .msi package.
2. Follow the installer dialog.

The agent service restarts automatically after upgrade.