Feature Overview

An Insights Task will provide the ability to execute the Leapp pre-upgrade assessment on one or many hosts.

Goals

For Users:  

1. Reduce time required to assess the upgradeability of RHEL landscape
2. Reduce the daunting technical burdens of RHEL life cycle management
3. No infrastructure required to assess across all hybrid-cloud footprints

For Red Hat:  As directed in the RHEL BU and Linux Platform Engineering 2022 key strategic initiatives, this feature will align with the following objectives:

• Deliver more value of subscription as services
• Grow the adoption of Insights
• Retain RHEL renewals providing upgrades for life cycle management

Supporting Materials

• Linux F2F 2Q2022 - RHEL Vision (Gunnar’s message of Services & Platform)
• Services Vision - Satellite Services vs HMS (Stef’s slides 6-12)
• Services F2F Preso March, 2022

User stories and use cases

As a current or potential enterprise customer, I have hundreds or thousands of RHEL systems that I must upgrade to a newer version of RHEL.  I need tools and automation to:

• prepare and register these systems for upgrade
• analyze and evaluate which systems are safe to proceed and which have remediation actions
• pre-built recommended remediation automation
• help me perform bulk upgrades of many systems

Requirements

A list of specific needs or objectives that a Feature must deliver to satisfy the Feature. Some requirements will be flagged as MVP. If an MVP gets shifted, the feature shifts.  If a non MVP requirement slips, it does not shift the feature.

Insights Tasks workflow

From the Insights Tasks UI, users have the option of initiating the pre-upgrade portion of the Leapp Upgrades workflow (Example mockup of Tasks workflow: https://marvelapp.com/prototype/6da50b0/screen/84773752)

1. Support RHEL 7🠆8 and 8🠆9
   1. Pre-filter to exclude non-supported options
   2. Provide guidance on nodes that could be updated to a minor release to allow proceeding versions
      1. Example:  RHEL 7.5 can be update to 7.9 to evalue upgrade eligibility to RHEL 8.
2. Install Leapp utility and execute the pre-upgrade analysis phase
   1. Using Insights/RHC ansible capabilities for execution
   2. Requires ansible playbook 
      1. Log4j task example 
      2. Leapp should be much simpler, ** potential example.
3. Collect or report resulting analysis data to Insights
   1. Defer to implementation detail, but possibly accomplished by appending playbook to push results back through tasks api for display in the ui
4. Display summary of results (number  and severities of inhibitors) with ability to expand to see full JSON
   1. Stretch goal or future feature:  Find a pretty way to display results.  Example image from Web Console (cockpit) UI to visualize the data analysis Chapter 4. Reviewing the pre-upgrade report Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 

Out of Scope

• Applying remediations.  This may be provided in a future feature once we learn more about this integration.
• A user workflow for Insights Inventory will be addressed on a separate feature Feature Draft: Leapp Upgrades self service in console.redhat.com (Insights) 
• Disconnected systems that cannot register to Insights.
• RHEL 6🠆7

Background, and strategic fit

See the strategic fit as defined in the opening Goals section, as well as the 2022 Strategic Goals and 3 Year Roadmap presentation, particularly slide 14. 

RHEL Leapp Upgrades tool

Existing documentation regarding how the Leapp Upgrade utility enables users to register via subscription-manager and perform the upgrades pulling content from the RH CDN.

• Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 
• Upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 with Leapp 

Bulk Upgrades with Red Hat Satellite

Existing integration of Leapp upgrades in Satellite has already been implemented and documented here.  Anible roles are provided in the Satellite Collection.

• Chapter 5. Upgrading Hosts from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 Red Hat Satellite 6.10 - Red Hat Customer Portal
• Engineering demo
• 001_leapp
• https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/events/playback/b15a0317-44b3-44fd-9306-f51a4c97ab84 

Screenshot of single node pre-assessment and remediation options in Web Console UI

Assumptions

• Systems must register using subscription-manager or rhc tools.
• Systems must register using insights-client

Customer Considerations

• TBD

Documentation Considerations

< What educational or reference material (docs) is required to support this product feature? For users/admins? Other functions (security officers, etc)? >

<What does success look like?>

< Does this feature have a doc impact?  Possible values are: New Content, Updates to existing content,  Release Note, or No Doc Impact>

 <If unsure and no Technical Writer is available, please contact Content Strategy. If yes, complete the following.>

• <What concepts do customers need to understand to be successful in [action]?>
• <How do we expect customers will use the feature? For what purpose(s)?>
• <What reference material might a customer want/need to complete [action]?>
• <Is there source material that can be used as reference for the Technical Writer in writing the content? If yes, please link if available. >
• <What is the doc impact (New Content, Updates to existing content, or Release Note)?>

Interoperability Considerations

< Which other products and versions in our portfolio does this feature impact? >

<If other products will be impacted set the ‘LP_Interop’ label on the Feature>

< What interoperability test scenarios should be factored by the layered product(s)? >

SMEs & Stakeholders

 

Questions