Patching CO Appliance images - are we still supported?

[Aaron Laing]

Our CO appliances are running from the downloaded appliance images, not a locally-installed Linux OS.  If the local Linux Admin team applies Security or other OS patches to the Linux OS on our CO appliances, are we still supported?  If not, are there specific patch bundles that can be provided/supported by Micro Focus?

Thanks,
Aaron

[Mark_Butler]

Hello Aaron,

Thank you for your question.

That is a very good question and there are a couple of us that have recently asked that question ourselves.

As you know, the current CO Virtual Appliance for the latest version (CO 3.04) comes with CentOS 6.9.  The CO Virtual Appliance update process is different than the installed version of CO since the OS is included as part of the Virtual Appliance.

Currently, we don't know the answer.

I will ask this question of engineering and hopefully have an answer later this week.  I say later this week because today and tomorrow are holidays where they are located.

I will let you know the answer.

Regards,

Mark

[Anusree]

Hi Mark,

I have the same question. Did you hear anything from engineering team?

[Mark_Butler]

Hello Aaron and Anusree,

Thank you again for your questions.

I did just receive an update this morning from engineering, but they did not answer the question.  They only spoke about migrating away from the CO Virtual Appliance to CO on an installed server.

I have seen an official response previously where they had a customer install updates using 'yum update' to address security concerns.  However, in this situation, the version of CentOS was not changed or upgraded.  It was simply installing updated versions of the RPMs for the CentOS 6.9 version.

I am still attempting to get a direct answer and hope to have one soon.

I'll be out of the office for the next week but someone else should provide the answer when they provide it.

Thank you again for your patience.

Regards,

Mark

[Aaron Laing]

Any update on this?
Thanks,
Aaron

[Mark_Butler]

Hello Aaron,

I've had some exchanges with engineering concerning this question.

They have not answered the question yet.

I have requested an update but I am still waiting.

Regards,

Mark

[Mark_Butler]

Hello Aaron and Anusree,

Engineering is still investigating this issue.

They explained that there is an additional complication with this situation.  Vertica 8.1.0-2 is included or bundled with CO 3.04.  With this fact, they have to take into consideration that Vertica 8.1.x is not supported on CentOS 6.10.

Here is the Vertica 8.1.x documentation for Supported Platforms.

https://www.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/SupportedPlatforms/MCandServer.thm%3FTocPath%3DVertica%25208.1.x%2520Supported%2520Platforms%7C_____1

I will request an update and let you know the results.

Regards,

Mark