Updating Remote Agents from Seeq Server

This article explains how Seeq admins can use the Seeq UI to update remote agents' Seeq version.

Prerequisites

1. The user must have access to the ‘Agents’ tab to perform remote agent updates.

2. Remote agents must have the following configurations and Seeq must be restarted after changing this configuration.
   seeq config set Features/RemoteAgentUpdates/Enabled True
seeq config set Installation/ServerType Agent
seeq config set Installation/RunAsService True

3. Remote Agents' versions previous to R56 should make sure that the Network/Hostname configuration parameter value is the same as the computer name of the remote agent.
   seeq config get Network
   Check if the value of Network/Hostname is the same as the machine name. If so, no further steps are needed.
   If not, execute the below commands.
   seeq config set Network/Hostname {machine name}
   The above command will modify the Network/Webserver/Url configuration too. Make sure to set it back to the original value (you can get it from the output of the previous command seeq config get Network)
   seeq config set Network/Webserver/Url {url_to_server}

4. The server should have an installer for the new version downloaded in the global installers folder:

   • Ubuntu: /var/opt/seeq/installers

   • Windows: Global dir/installers ( by default if C:\ProgramData\Seeq\installers)

5. Firewall settings for the remote agent machine must allow HTTP access to the server.

Instructions

1. Log in to the Seeq as an admin.

2. From the hamburger menu on the top left, click ‘Administration’.

3. Next to the ‘Datasources’ tab, click on the ‘Agents’ tab.

4. 

   On this page, the user can see all of the remote agents.

5. Remote Agent version update functionality is available for all remote agents which have Features/RemoteAgentUpdates/Enabled set to true. ‘Stage Version’ and ‘Update to Staged Version’ buttons are enabled when no individual remote agent is selected. The selection of a single agent disables the buttons since an update of individual remote agents is not yet supported.

6. With a click on the ‘Stage Version’ button, a modal box opens.

7. 

   The dropdown list on the modal box displays available Seeq Versions. This versions' list is created by reading the installers available on Server’s data/installers folder. The currently set Features/RemoteAgentUpdates/StageInstaller configuration value should be selected by default in the dropdown list.

   

8. Select the version that remote agents should stage and eventually update to.

9. With on click of a save button, a banner message ‘Update to Staged Version set successfully’ is displayed. This suggests that directive is set here and in a few minutes agent will receive this directive and start staging up the remote agent machine.

10. 

11. ‘Version Update Status’ column displays the ‘Pending update’ message.

12. Remote agent checks for updates every 10 mins increment of an hour (i.e. 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins past an hour). The status in the column is expected to be changed to: ‘Downloading {version} (*% complete)’, ‘Extracting {version}’, ‘Staged {version}’ or ‘Error’ (in case of any) with a description of an error in a tool-tip.

13. 

14. Version update status: ‘Staged {version}’ suggests that the remote agent is ready for an update. Click on 'Update to Staged Version’ to initiate the upgrade on all Remote Agents.

15. With the ‘Update to Staged Version’ button, a modal box opens.

    

16. With on click of the ‘Save' button, the configuration is set. The modal box closes and on the top, left corner a success message is displayed.

    

17. Status in ‘Update Version Status’ changes to 'Pending update to {version}’ indicating all remote agents update to {version}.

18. Agents receive this directive in 15 minutes of being set and switch the current version to the staged version. Seeq restarts on the agent, so the ‘Connection Status’ on UI displays Disconnected briefly.

19. Different statuses in the column ‘Update Version Status’ can be ‘Restart to {version}’, ‘Error’ with an error description in the tool-tip.

20. Once the agent has successfully updated the version, ‘Up to date.' is displayed in the ‘Version Update Status’ column. The ‘Version’ column displays the new version.

 Troubleshooting

1. Debugging tip: this method of updating the remote agents will install Seeq to a new “Installations” directory within the data folder (i.e. ProgramData\Seeq\Data\Installations\R5X.X.X)

2. Remote agents send the status message to the server periodically which is logged in appserver.log on the server. Look for “agents/remote-updates/<agent_name>/directives” in appserver.log to find the communication sent by the remote agent to the server. No log found for an agent suggests that either there is a problem in the connection between RAU and server (could be this CRAB) or the update process is not running on the remote agent. Check the configurations suggested in the prerequisites. Seeq on the remote agent should be restarted after the configuration change.

3. The version is staged from the server, but still, no update is displayed on the UI ‘Version Update Status’ column of ‘Agents' tab.
   Root cause: When on the remote agent, Network/Hostname has been set to something different from the machine hostname (for example EC2 public address) then Version Update Status does not display any text for that agent.
   CRAB-26081 - Remote Agent Upgrades: Use single source for the Agent name at the API Closed Resolution: In this scenario, an update to a new version can be performed successfully. The status can be verified from appserver.log on the server or remote-updates.log on the remote agent.

4. When Features/DatasourceManagement/Enabled is updated from command prompt or from Administration UI User needs manually refresh the browser page in order to see the Agents tab appeared/hidden.

5. When Features/RemoteAgentUpdates/Enabled set to False on the Agent side and User requests to stage or upgrade agents via Administration - Agents UI Seeq would show a green banner with a confirmation text for the successful request placing. The confirmation is only relevant to the fact that the required setting is performed on the server-side and that it has started asking for staging/update through the API. On the Agent, staging or update won’t be performed unless the configuration parameter Features/RemoteAgentUpdates/Enabled is set to True.

6. The automated upgrade feature is not preventing users from downgrading the Seeq version on agents' machines. And we do not recommend doing so.

7. ERROR in version update status column with a tooltip message Please contact Seeq Support. Remote Agent Update Path conflict detected.
   Root Cause: This suggests that customer has moved global data directory. The path in <base_installation>/set-installation-path.bat file is not pointing to <data_folder>/installations.
   Resolution: Open seeq command promopt and run seeq install --data <data-folder> command to correct the path conflict. Example for <data-folder>: D:\ProgramData\Seeq\data

8.  JVM Agent did not connect to the server after the update

   • RCA: CAcert files were missing in the new install directory

   • Resolution: Manually copy cert files in the <data-folder>/installations/<current-version>. We have a CRAB that may fix it.

9. Agent did not restart with the new version and looped through a restart.

   • Investigation: Check remote-updates.log. Text ‘Restart to <version>’ is repeating. Compare the text/path in set-installation-path.bat in Seeq base folder with path of the data folder.

   • RCA: Customer had done a couple of manual configurations and tweaks leading to inconsistencies in Seeq config paths. We checked paths using seeq config get Install and a few of the values were referring to the folders in F:\ whereas only one (global data) was pointing to C:  Manual copy and paste of data folders can be the reason for the inconsistencies.

   • Resolution: Running the command seeq install --data should correct the paths. Else update set-installation-path.bat in base install of Seeq to point to the correct folder i.e. /seeq/data/installations/<new version folder>.

10. Moving the data directory after a remote agent update isn't possible without resetting the base because the installation is actually running from within the data\installations folder already
    In that case, since you're already on the system and can make changes, a suggestion is to run the installer for the same version. That will reset the base version to the current version and allow the command to complete