Performing the Rolling Online Upgrade

A rolling online upgrade is the recommended upgrade process for a Couchbase cluster.

Swap Rebalance Example

You can perform a swap rebalance to upgrade your Couchbase Server nodes without reducing your cluster performance due to diminished capacity from missing nodes.

You need at least one extra node to perform a swap rebalance. If you are unable to perform an upgrade via swap rebalance, perform a standard online upgrade instead.

Without a spare node available

If you don’t have an extra node available, and you have enough cluster capacity to service requests after removing one of the nodes, prepare for swap rebalance by first removing an existing node to serve as the initial swap node:

  1. Back up the entire cluster.

  2. Remove one node from the cluster by selecting Manage  Server Nodes  Remove Server for the node you wish to remove.

  3. Click Rebalance.

  4. Proceed with the instructions.

Swap Rebalance Example with an Extra Node Available

  1. Install the latest version of Couchbase Server on the extra node that is not yet a part of the cluster. For instructions see Performing the Single Node Upgrade.

  2. Create a backup of your cluster data using the cbbackup tool.

  3. Open the Couchbase Web Console on an existing cluster node.

  4. Select Servers  Active Servers to view and manage the cluster nodes.

  5. Click Add Server.

  6. In the Add Server dialog, provide either a hostname or IP address for the new node to be added. Enter your Couchbase Server administrative credentials in the fields Username and Password and select the appropriate service.

  7. Remove one of your existing old nodes from the cluster.

    Under Server Nodes  Servers, click Remove for the node you want to remove to mark it for removal.

  8. In the Servers panel, click Rebalance. The rebalance process moves data from the existing node to your newly added node.

Repeat these steps for all the remaining old nodes in the cluster. You can add and remove multiple nodes from a cluster. However, always add the same number of nodes from the cluster as you remove.

For example, the addition of 4 nodes and the removal of 4 nodes is classed as a swap rebalance, but the addition of 7 nodes and removal of 4 nodes is not.