Morpheus.instance.instance_version in Database

Provisioning & Self Service
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tl;dr - when updating the Morpheus DB to adjust an instance for an in-place OS upgrade, can the instance.instance_version value be set to NULL without any unintended issues?

We’re mainly a vCenter shop, and have plenty of folks who do in-place upgrade of their systems.

This has been a bit problematic since Morpheus doesn’t have a clean way to upgrade the version of the instance. The solution has been to make an adjustment within the Morpheus Database (which we’ve scripted out the flow a while back) which seems to mainly work to adjust the instance (the compute part isn’t adjusted at the current time).

My question is, the Version in the instance doesn’t always change when the layout/instance type is adjusted, and I tracked it down to the instance.instance_version in the database.
If this is NULL, it seems Morpheus dynamically reads in the Version value based on the layout/instance type, but if this value is set it will use that instead.

We have a few systems that have been adjusted in terms of the layout/instance type to reflect the upgrade, but also an instance.instance_verson value set. Does this come from only brownfield systems that were made manage, or did Morpheus use to use this value back in the day as well? I couldn’t find the pattern there.
I also confirmed if I set this value to NULL, the UI will then reflect the dynamic value based on the layout/instance type… is there a downside or reason not to do this?
I did set the instance_version on an instance to “donkey_kong”, and the UI reflected that fine without any issues so that confirmed the whole “whatever is set here will be reflected”, and if NULL it will use the dynamic value without any apparently negative consequences.

So can I adjust my script to set this value to NULL for any system where we’re updating the Instance information to reflect the underlying VM in-place OS upgrade and be okay?

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I’d recommend you open a technical request to explore this and confirm. Database modifications aren’t the intended way to operate Morpheus, and it’s a large schema with many tables & relationships.

In general ** and this is a generalisation ** if the value you wish to modify is not part of a foreign key relationship, you’ll be able to modify the schema as you wish.

And if there aren’t relationships of that sort, I’d be more inclined to think of the value as purely metadata, but again, if this is business critical, and you have to modify the database content directly to achieve your goal, please engage Morpheus Professional Services

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Ollie,

Will do. This has been a long running sort of issue/support provided best option as ‘temporary stop gap’ (you know how those temporary deals can become longer term than expected).

Thanks!

– Ron