# Upgrading the Shared File System service

This document outlines steps and notes for operators for reference when upgrading their Shared File System service (manila) from previous versions of OpenStack. The service aims to provide a minimal downtime upgrade experience. Since the service does not operate in the data plane, the accessibility of any provisioned resources such as shares, share snapshots, share groups, share replicas, share servers, security services and share networks will not be affected during an upgrade. Clients can continue to actively use these resources while the service control plane is being upgraded.

## Plan the upgrade

It is highly recommended that you:

- update the Shared File System service to the latest code from the release you are currently using.

- read the Shared File System service release notes for the release that you intended to upgrade to. Pay special attention to the deprecations and upgrade notes.

- consider the impact of the service control plane upgrade to your cloud’s users. The upgrade process interrupts provisioning of new shared file systems and associated resources. It also prevents management operations on existing shared file systems and associated resources. Data path access to shared file systems will remain uninterrupted.

- take a backup of the shared file system service database so you can rollback any failed upgrades to a previous version of the software. Although the `manila-manage` command offers a database downgrade command, it is not supported for production use. The only way to recover from a failed update is to restore the database from a backup.

- identify your Shared File System service back end storage systems/solutions and their drivers. Ensure that the version of each storage system is supported by the respective driver in the target release. If you’re using a storage solution from a third party vendor, consult their product pages to determine if the solution is supported by the release of OpenStack that you are upgrading to. Many vendors publish a support matrix either within this service administration guide, or on their own websites. If you find an incompatibility, stop, and determine if you have to upgrade the storage solution first.

- develop an upgrade procedure and assess it thoroughly by using a test environment similar to your production environment.

## Graceful service shutdown

Shared File System service components (scheduler, share-manager, data-manager) are python processes listening for messages on a AMQP queue. When the operator sends SIGTERM signal to the process, they stop getting new work from the queue, complete any outstanding work and then terminate.

## Database Migration

The Shared File System service only supports cold upgrades, meaning that the service plane is expected to be down during the database upgrade. Database upgrades include schema changes as well as data migrations to accommodate newer versions of the schema. Once upgraded, downgrading the database is not supported. When the database has been upgraded, older services may misbehave when accessing database objects, so ensure all `manila-*` services are down before you upgrade the database.

## Prune deleted database rows

Shared File System service resources are soft deleted in the database, so users are able to track instances in the DB that are created and destroyed in production. Soft-deletion also helps cloud operators adhere to data retention policies. Not purging soft-deleted entries affects DB performance as indices grow very large and data migrations take longer as there is more data to migrate. It is recommended that you prune the service database before upgrading to prevent unnecessary data migrations. Pruning permanently deletes soft deleted database records.

    manila-manage db purge <age_in_days>

## Upgrade procedure

1. Ensure you’re running the latest Shared File System service packages for the OpenStack release that you currently use.

2. Run the `manila-status upgrade check` command to validate that the service is ready for upgrade.

3. Backup the manila database

4. Gracefully stop all Shared File System service processes. We recommend in this order: manila-api, manila-scheduler, manila-share and manila-data.

Note

The manila-data service may be processing time consuming data migrations. Shutting it down will interrupt any ongoing migrations, and these will not be automatically started when the service comes back up. You can check the status on ongoing migrations with `manila migration-get-progress` command; issue `manila migration-complete` for any ongoing migrations that have completed their data copy phase.

1. Upgrade all the service packages. If upgrading from distribution packages, your system package manager is expected to handle this automatically.

2. Fix any deprecated configuration options used.

3. Fix any deprecated api policies used.

4. Run `manila-manage db sync` from any node with the latest manila packages.

5. Start all the Shared File System service processes.

6. Inspect the `services` by running `manila service-list`. If there are any orphaned records, run `manila-manage service cleanup` to delete them.

## Upgrade testing

The Shared File System service code is continually tested for upgrade from a previous release to the current release using Grenade. Grenade is an OpenStack test harness project that validates upgrade scenarios between releases. It uses DevStack to initially perform a base OpenStack install and then upgrade to a target version. Tests include the creation of a variety of Shared File System service resources on the prior release, and verification for their existence and functionality after the upgrade.

this page last updated: 2026-04-22 07:00:00

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