Operating system upgrade overview

For upgrades, Avaya Experience Portal supports the following operating systems:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x 64-bit or newer 7.x update

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x 64-bit or newer update

• Avaya Enterprise Linux AvayaLinux-RH8*.iso.

For customers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.x or Avaya Enterprise Linux 6.x, it is necessary to upgrade the operating system rather than only upgrade the Experience Portal application.

To upgrade to Avaya Enterprise Linux AvayaLinux-RH8*.iso, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x 64-bit or newer 7.x update, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x 64-bit or newer update:

• Upgrade Avaya Enterprise Linux if you have opted for the Avaya bundled server offer. There are two upgrade methods for Avaya Enterprise Linux:

  • Upgrade using an ISO image file: This upgrade method provides an auto upgrade of Avaya Enterprise Linux.

  • Upgrade with the software installation DVD: This upgrade method provides an auto-upgrade option to upgrade Avaya Enterprise Linux.

• For Experience Portal 6.x or 7.x upgrades on Avaya Enterprise Linux:

  • Upgrade Avaya Enterprise Linux using the Avaya Enterprise Linux ISO release aligned with the target Experience Portal 8.x release

• For Experience Portal 8.x upgrades on Avaya Enterprise Linux:

  • Upgrading Avaya Enterprise Linux using the Avaya Enterprise Linux ISO is not supported, however applying the latest Avaya Enterprise Linux security patch will provide the same functionality:

    • For example, upgrading Avaya Enterprise Linux 8.1 AvayaLinux-RH8* to AVL 8.1.x AvayaLinux-RH*.iso is not supported.

    • Use the upgrade option during the Avaya Enterprise Linux patch install which applies all the required changes to support the product on the original Avaya Enterprise Linux. For example, ./setup.sh -v 8.1.x.

• Do a fresh installation of a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server if you have opted for the software-only offer and are upgrading from versions prior to Experience Portal 7.2.x.

  For upgrades from Avaya Experience Portal 6.x or 7.x to 8.1, in-place OVA upgrades are not supported. The 8.1 OVAs must be deployed.

  For upgrades from Avaya Experience Portal 8.0 to 8.1, in-place upgrades are supported via ISO.

  Note:

  This note is for Software-only customers. Experience Portal does not bundle any packages that are obtained from Red Hat. Experience Portal provides a Prerequisite installer that installs all the Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages that are needed to install Experience Portal, provided that customers configure a valid yum repository on the system that contains all the required Experience Portal prerequisites. Customers can either run the Experience Portal Prerequisite installer standalone outside of installation or alternatively run the Prerequisite installer within the Experience Portal installer. All OS packages required by Experience Portal are standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages except for php-process. The yum repository or repositories configured on the system must contain standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages plus php-process.

  Note:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server does not support upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server. To save your Experience Portal configuration while doing a fresh installation of a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, ensure that you create a backup of Experience Portal from System Backup menu in EPM. Ensure that you save the backup folder on a server that is not part of the Experience Portal system. For more information about backing up Experience Portal data from the System Backup menu in EPM, see the Administering Avaya Experience Portal guide on the Avaya Support site.

• Upgrade or perform a fresh installation of the Primary EPM, Auxiliary EPM and MPP software depending on whether the OS is upgraded or freshly installed.