Performing the Concourse Upgrade
Upgrading Concourse involves following these steps:
- Download the latest supported Concourse release
- Upload it to your BOSH environment
- Create a new deployment manifest
- Use BOSH to deploy this new manifest in place of your existing Concourse deployment
This step-by-step tutorial includes details for checking out sample manifest and supporting files for the desired deployment version from the concourse-bosh-deployment
repository. These can be used as a template for customizing your release.
The guide below is written to provide necessary details for someone starting this process from scratch on a new workstation. You can skip certain steps if you have deployed from concourse-bosh-deployment
before and already have a working directory, credentials, and/or cloud configuration variables.
If you have not backed up your current Concourse deployment, follow the steps in Backup Concourse before proceeding.
Set up the concourse-bosh-deployment
Directory on Your Local Machine
Skip step 1 if you already have concourse-bosh-deployment
cloned to a local directory.
-
Clone the
concourse-bosh-deployment
repository to your workstation by running the following command:1
git clone https://github.com/concourse/concourse-bosh-deployment.git
-
Navigate to the
concourse-bosh-deployment
directory by running the following command:1
cd concourse-bosh-deployment
All the paths used in this guide are relative to this directory.
Check your Git Status
Pivotal recommends checking your Git status whenever you enter the
concourse-bosh-deployment
directory. Do so by running the following command:1
git status
If you encounter unstaged files that can be overwritten by checking out the new release branch,
git stash
your changes, check out the release, and thengit stash pop
and resolve any merge conflicts. -
Check out the
concourse-bosh-deployment
Git release that corresponds to your desired upgrade version. For example with the latest release,v5.5.8
:1
git checkout v5.5.8
Tip
Run
git tag
to see a list of the different releases.Checking out a release, rather than a branch, produces the following output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Note: checking out RELEASE. You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout. If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, use `-b` with the checkout command again. For example: git checkout -b <new-branch-name> HEAD is now at HASH COMMIT-MESSAGE
Where:
RELEASE
is the release version number.HASH
is the hash key of the most recent commit.COMMIT-MESSAGE
is the most recent commit message.
Set Up Certificates, Log In, and Alias Your BOSH Environment
Note
If you already have your CA certificate and have already logged in to and aliased your BOSH environment, you can skip this section.
-
Get a CA certificate for your BOSH Director.
-
If you created your BOSH Director manually, retrieve the credentials that were created during setup.
If you are working with an Ops Manager-deployed BOSH Director, log in to Ops Manager and access the following endpoint in your Ops Manager domain:
1
https://OPS-MANAGER-DOMAIN/download_root_ca_cert
Where
OPS-MANAGER-DOMAIN
is the Ops Manager domain.This will create a file in your downloads folder called
root_ca_certificate
. -
Copy and rename the
root_ca_certificate
file into the working directory. For example, on OSX:1
mv ~/Downloads/root_ca_certificate ./ca-cert.crt
Tip
This certificate file can be used whenever a CLI command asks for a
--ca-cert
flag and value.
-
-
Ensure you are logged in to your BOSH environment with the appropriate BOSH Director credentials. For example, if you saved your CA certificate as
ca-cert.crt
, run the following command:1
bosh -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-IP login --ca-cert=ca-cert.crt
Where
BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-IP
is your BOSH environment IP address.Finding director credentials
If you set up a BOSH Director directly, the director credentials were returned as a file after the setup process finished.
If you have an Ops Manager-deployed BOSH Director, you can find the director credentials in the Ops Manager credentials tab or at the following endpoint in your Ops Manager domain:
1
http://OPS-MANAGER-DOMAIN/api/v0/deployed/director/credentials/director_credentials
Where
OPS-MANAGER-DOMAIN
is your Ops Manager domain. -
Give your environment an alias by running the following command:
1
bosh -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-IP alias-env ALIAS --ca-cert=ca-cert.crt
Where:
BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-IP
is your BOSH environment IP addressALIAS
is the alias you're creating BOSH environment
Using an alias for your BOSH environment substantially reduces the keystrokes needed for commands in future.
Tip
You can use this alias whenever you target this environment by using the
-e
flag in a BOSH command.
BOSH and Concourse Variables
Deploying with BOSH requires setting some variables to fill in details in your manifest. These are written as placeholders in the following format: ((placeholder))
.
You can do this in a number of ways, but Pivotal recommends creating a file to define a key-value pair for each required variable, and checking it into version control so that it can be safely ,maintained and tracked over time. Follow the steps below to do so.
Tip
The following steps describe setting variables that are necessary for deployment in a YAML file. If you prefer to set them on the command line when you run bosh deploy
, you can pass them in at that time with the --var KEY=VALUE
flag and syntax. For more information, see Deploy in the BOSH documentation.
-
To find the values needed to fill out each of the variables in the next step, check the currently deployed Concourse manifest. Use the following command to tell BOSH to fetch the manifest and put it in a
deployed-manifest.yml
file:1 2 3 4
bosh \ -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-ALIAS \ -d CONCOURSE-DEPLOYMENT-NAME \ manifest > deployed-manifest.yml
Where
BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-ALIAS
is your BOSH environment alias andCONCOURSE-DEPLOYMENT-NAME
is your Concourse deployment name.This command produces a file that contains a value for each of the variables that you define in the next step.
Sending the response to a file is a security precaution that ensures that any included keys are not echoed to your terminal session history. Destroy this file after you are done with this upgrade process.
-
Create a file to store your Concourse- and BOSH-related environment variables, if you do not already have one from a previous deployment. For example, the following command uses Vim to create a file called
variables.yml
:1
vim variables.yml
This file holds all the variables that BOSH needs to interpolate into references in the manifest file. The manifest file then serves as a recipe for the new deployment.
Why create a file for these variables?
The benefit to doing things this way is that you can check this file into your version control, track changes over time, and more easily document and share this information with others in your org. It also saves you the trouble of looking up configuration details every time you need to change your Concourse deployment.
-
Add the key-value pairs shown in the snippet below into the file.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
--- local_user: username: USERNAME password: PASSWORD deployment_name: DEPLOYMENT-NAME db_persistent_disk_type: PERSISTENT-DISK-TYPE db_vm_type: VM-TYPE external_url: EXTERNAL-URL network_name: NETWORK-NAME postgres_password: POSTGRESQL-PASSWORD web_ip: WEB-IP web_network_name: WEB-NETWORK-NAME web_vm_type: WEB-VM-TYPE worker_vm_type: WORKER-VM-TYPE
Where:
DEPLOYMENT-NAME
is your deployment namePERSISTENT-DISK-TYPE
is the persistent disk type for the databaseVM-TYPE
is the VM type for the database instanceEXTERNAL-URL
is the external URLNETWORK-NAME
is the name subproperty of the network property in your deployed manifestPOSTGRESQL-PASSWORD
is the password subproperty of the PostgreSQL property in your deployed manifestWEB-IP
is your web IPWEB-NETWORK-NAME
is your web network nameWEB-VM-TYPE
is the VM type for the web instanceWORKER-VM-TYPE
is the VM type for the worker instance -
Replace each value placeholder with the appropriate properties in the
deployed-manifest.yml
file that you created earlier.Optional Tip:
If Concourse is deployed with a component such as CredHub, these variables might be automatically interpolated. You can check if this is the case by running the following command:
1 2 3 4
bosh \ -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-ALIAS \ -d TARGET-CONCOURSE-DEPLOYMENT \ manifest | grep “(("
If the search returns any values, CredHub or a similar component might be involved. In this case, investigate your current deployment, or get in touch with whoever has the necessary context, before proceeding further.
-
Save and close your variables file.
Confirm Your Availability Zones
Your deployed manifest, located at ./cluster/concourse.yml
, has some defaults set for availability zones (AZs). Often these must be customized to suit a given environment. To ensure these are set correctly, follow these steps:
-
Check the AZ names in your currently deployed manifest.
To find these, you can reference the
deployed-manifest.yml
file we created in the last section, or run thebosh manifest
command to re-create it:1 2 3 4
bosh \ -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-ALIAS \ -d CONCOURSE-DEPLOYMENT-NAME \ manifest > deployed-manifest.yml
-
Open the Concourse manifest file of the
concourse-bosh-deployment
repository cluster by running the following command:1
vim ./cluster/concourse.yml
-
Change each of the three
az
properties in the manifest file so that they match the AZs in yourdeployed-manifest.yml
file. For example, if your AZ isdefault
, your manifest file looks like this:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
... instance_groups: - name: web ... azs: [default] ... - name: db ... azs: [default] ... - name: worker ... azs: [default] ... ...
Tip
You can use a find-and-replace operation in a text editor to change all these values simultaneously.
-
Save and close the
./cluster/concourse.yml
file.
bosh deploy
Concourse to Your Cloud Environment
Tip for upgrading very large Concourses
If you have many pipelines with many containers, pause your pipelines before you start the upgrade. Then, after you finish the upgrade, wait for all of your workers to be ready and then turn on your pipelines one by one.
Pivotal recommends doing this to prevent your pipelines from overwhelming the first workers that come online, which could cause a crash.
To deploy your new Concourse version, you need the following information:
- Your new concourse manifest, such as
./cluster/concourse.yml
- Your versions file, such as
-l versions.yml
- Your environment variables, such as
-l variables.yml
- Any required operations files for your environment or Concourse setup
- A
--vars-store
flag with the name of a file in which BOSH can store your cluster credentials, such as--vars-store cluster-creds.yml
About the cluster-creds.yml
file
BOSH creates this file for you if it does not already exist. If this is the case, you still need to specify a filename for BOSH to use. In the case that you already have a cluster-creds.yml
file, specify it here so that BOSH does not re-create it.
If you specify a file that does not exist, and BOSH re-creates this file for you, it also re-creates things such as passwords and secrets that exist within the file.
-
When you are ready, navigate to your terminal and run the following
bosh deploy
command:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
bosh deploy \ -e BOSH-ENVIRONMENT-ALIAS \ -d CONCOURSE-DEPLOYMENT-NAME ./cluster/concourse.yml \ -l versions.yml \ -l variables.yml \ -o ./cluster/operations/backup-atc.yml \ -o ./cluster/operations/basic-auth.yml \ -o ./cluster/operations/privileged-http.yml \ -o ./cluster/operations/static-web.yml \ --vars-store cluster-creds.yml
Different Concourse deployments require different environment variables and operations files. If you encounter an error, check the error message for clues about additional variables that need to be set. For more information, see the Concourse documentation.