In-place upgrade of cluster nodes?

[Michael D'Angelo]

With the new in-place upgrade feature, is it supported to in-place upgrade a failover cluster node or do we still need to use Cluster Rolling Upgrades?

[#2]

You will upgrade your clusters in a rolling fashion, so it will be a Rolling Upgrade.  Now, how you upgrade the OS will have new flexibility, you could either do clean installs of the nodes or you could do an In-place Upgrade of the nodes.

So yes, you could do a Rolling Upgrade of the cluster with In-place Upgrades of the OS's as you go.

Thanks!
Elden

[#3]

Just so I understand, would I have to evict the cluster node, do an in-place upgrade, and then re-join the node to the cluster?  Or can I just pause the cluster node, and do the in-place upgrade while the server is a member of the cluster?

[#4]

No need to evict, just pause and drain (Suspend-ClusterNode -drain) or stop the Cluster Service (Stop-ClusterNode) so there are no workloads being hosted on the node and then In-place Upgrade

[#5 · Accepted solution]

If you do an in-place upgrade then just make sure everything you have running on the server is compatible, i.e antivirus software.

I always prefer to do a wipe and full install myself just feels better to be on a clean slate.

Oh and remember to finish the upgrade within 30 days. I have seen issues if you let it last longer then that.

I have a nice step by step guide on my blog to perform a rolling cluster upgrade. you can view it here https://pixelrobots.co.uk/2017/06/step-by-step-guide-rolling-cluster-upgrade-from-2012-r2-to-2016/

Hope it helps. If I can help any further let me know.

Thanks

Richard