Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c recently released an upgrade for Solaris Agent Controllers. In this week's blog post, we'll show you how to upgrade agent controllers.

Detailed instructions about upgrading Agent Controllers are available in the product documentation here. This blog post uses an Enterprise Controller which is configured for connected mode operation. If you'd like to apply the agent update in a disconnected installation, additional instructions are available here.

Step 1: Download Agent Controller Updates

With a connected mode Ops Center installation, you can check for product updates at any time by selecting the Enterprise Controller from the left-hand Administration navigation tab.

Select the right-hand Action link “Ops Center Downloads” to open a pop-up dialog displaying any new product updates. In this example, the Enterprise Controller has already been upgraded to the latest version (Update 1, also shown as build version 2076) so only the Agent Controller updates will appear.

There are three updates available: one for Solaris 10 X86, one for Solaris 8-10 SPARC, and one for all versions of Solaris 11. Note that the last update in the screen shot is the Solaris 11 update; for details on any of the downloads, place your mouse over the information icon under the details column for a pop-up text region.

Select the software to download and click the Next button to display the Ops Center license agreement.

Review and click the check box to accept the license agreement, then click the Next button to begin downloading the software.

The status screen shows the current download status. If desired, you can perform the downloads as a background job. Simply click the check box, then click the next button to proceed to the summary screen.

The summary screen shows the updates to be downloaded as well as the current status. Clicking the Finish button will close the dialog and return to the Browser UI. The download job will continue to run in Ops Center and progress can still be viewed from the jobs menu at the bottom of the browser window.

Step 2: Check the Version of Existing Agent Controllers

After the download job completes, you can check the availability of agent updates as well as the current versions of your Agent Controllers from the left-hand Assets navigation tab.

Select “Operating Systems” from the pull-down tab lets to display only OS assets. Next, select “Solaris” in the left-hand tab to display the Solaris assets. Finally, select the Summary tab in the center display panel to show which versions of agent controllers are installed in your data center.

Notice that a few of the OS assets are not displayed in the Agent Controllers tab. Ops Center will not display OS instances which do not have an Agent Controller installation. This includes Enterprise Controllers and Proxy Controllers (unless the agent has been activated on the OS instance) and and OS instances using agentless management.

For Agent Controllers which support an update, the version of agent software (in this example, 2083) appears to the right of the currently installed version.

Step 3: Upgrade Your Agent Controllers

If desired, you can upgrade agent controllers from the previous screen by selecting the desired systems and clicking the upgrade button. Alternatively, you can click the link “Upgrade All Agent Controllers” in the right-hand Actions menu:

In either case, a pop-up dialog lets you start the upgrade process. The first screen in the dialog lets you choose the upgrade method:

Ops Center provides three ways to upgrade agent controllers:

• Automatic Upgrade: If Agent Controllers are running on all assets, Ops Center can automatically upgrade the software to the latest version without requiring any login credentials to the system
• SSH using a single set of credentials: If all assets use the same login credentials, you can apply a single set to all assets for the upgrade process. The log-in credentials are the same ones used for asset discovery and management, which are stored in the Plan Management navigation tab under Credentials.
• SSH using individual credentials: If assets use different login credentials, you can select a different set for each asset.

After selecting the upgrade method, click the Next button to proceed to the summary screen. Click the Finish button to close the pop-up dialog and start the upgrade job for the agent controllers.

The upgrade job runs a series of tasks in parallel, and will upgrade all agents which have been selected. Once the job completes, the OS instances in your data center will be upgraded and running the latest version of Agent Controller software.