Skip to content

Upgrading to DAOS Version 2.8

Upgrading DAOS from Version 2.6.5 to Version 2.8

Upgrading DAOS from Version 2.6.5 to DAOS Version 2.8.0 is supported as an offline update, maintaining the data in DAOS pools and containers.

Environments running DAOS levels older than 2.6.5 should be first upgraded to DAOS Version 2.6.5 before upgrading to DAOS Version 2.8.

The recommended procedure for the upgrade is the following:

Review Interoperability Requirements

This upgrading procedure assumes that all DAOS servers, clients and admin nodes are updated at the same time. If not all nodes are updated at the same time, refer to DAOS Version Interoperability to determine which DAOS levels on the DAOS servers, clients and admin nodes are interoperable and plan the sequence of upgrades accordingly.

Stop the DAOS system

Follow the steps in Stopping a DAOS system to completely stop the running DAOS system.

Perform all necessary software updates

  • On all servers, admin nodes, and clients, perform any required OS updates and/or high-speed fabric stack updates. Refer to the DAOS 2.8 Support Matrix for details on the supported levels.

  • On all servers, admin nodes, and clients, perform the RPM update to the new DAOS 2.8.0 fix level. Set up the new DAOS repository, then run dnf update (EL9), or zypper update (SLES/OpenSUSE) to update the DAOS RPMs and their dependencies.

Note

On the DAOS servers, the --allowerasing option is needed due to a re-packaging of the SPDK toolset: In previous releases SPDK was provided in spdk RPMs. DAOS 2.8 provides SPDK in daos-spdk RPMs, which can only be installed if the older spdk RPMs are erased.

Note

The new SPDK version 26.01 in DAOS 2.8 changes some of the parameter names in the daos_nvme.conf configuration file. In case of a downgrade from DAOS 2.8 to the older DAOS release, the daos_nvme.conf file needs to be manually changed back. See the "Known Issues" section of the DAOS 2.8 Release Notes for details.

  • On systems using libfabric, install the new mercury-libfabric RPM on all servers and clients. In mercury-2.4.1 the libfabric provider is not included in the base mercury-2.4.1 RPM but can be optionally installed as a separate mercury-libfabric package (similar to the mercury-ucx package for UCX). Failing to install this package will cause errors at startup when the ofi provider is used, similar to this one:
  mercury->cls [fatal] /home/daos/pre/build/external/release/mercury/src/na/na.c:645 na_plugin_open() Could not open lib /usr/lib64/mercury/libna_plugin_ofi.so, libfabric.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
  mercury->cls [fatal] /home/daos/pre/build/external/release/mercury/src/na/na.c:570 na_plugin_scan_path() Could not open plugin (libna_plugin_ofi.so)

  • In Slingshot environments, if the SHS version has been updated as part of the OS and high-speed fabric update, then the LD_LIBRARY_PATH must be updated to point to the new version of the SHS-provided libfabric. This is needed in the engine environment section of daos_server.yml on the servers, and in the user environment settings on the clients. See High Speed Fabric Support for details.

  • On all server nodes, make sure that transparent hugepages are disabled in grub for the Linux kernel command line, and reboot if necessary. Run cat /proc/cmdline|grep transparent_hugepage=never to check if the setting is in effect. If transparent hugepages are enabled, the DAOS server will not start:

  N0001 ERROR 2026/01/22 14:10:31 server: code = 623 resolution = "disable THP by adding 'transparent_hugepage=never' kernel parameter in the grub configuration file then reboot and restart daos_server"

Restart DAOS

Follow the steps in Starting a DAOS system to start DAOS after the upgrade.

Update DAOS pool versions to newest version

New DAOS software versions may introduce new DAOS pool versions, and newly created pools will automatically use the newest pool version. Please refer to DAOS Version Interoperability to determine if the highest DAOS pool version changed in this release, and to check what the steps are to update older pools to the newest pool version (or to migrate data from older pools to a newly created pool if in-place updating of the pool version is not possible).

Upgrading DAOS from Version older than 2.6.5 to Version 2.8

DAOS provides "N-1" interoperability. To update from DAOS versions older than Version 2.6.5 to Version 2.8, please update the system to the 2.6.5 fixlevel first before updating to DAOS 2.8.