Maintenance Mode and Upgrading SNAP HA™ pair on SoftNAS 5

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Last updated: Apr 05, 2023

For major SoftNAS StorageCenter upgrades that require downtime, Buurst has provided a way to protect replications and SNAP HA pairings while also keeping storage connectivity and data access uninterrupted. To check whether an upgrade is required, click Settings > Software Updates in the main menu on the left.

Note: Ensure that Source and Target node have been established. For the purposes of this document, the following terminology will be used:

This KB applies to upgrading all SoftNAS 5 deployments to latest in both AWS and Azure.

All SoftNAS 5 deployments supports 1-click upgrade from the UI. 

Original Status

Document Reference

Source Node

Instance A

Target Node

Instance B

Please follow the steps below to upgrade to the latest SoftNAS release from the UI.

  1. In the SoftNAS StorageCenter interface for Instance A, navigate to the SnapReplicate / SNAP HA menu. Click Action and then Replicate Now as shown below to perform a quick 1 minute replication cycle. When finished it should read SNAPREPLICATE-COMPLETE on all volumes




  2. Next, Deactivate SnapHA 
  3. Next, In the SoftNAS StorageCenter interface for Instance B, navigate to Settings > Software Updates > Apply update now

  4. Once update complete successfully, In the SoftNAS StorageCenter interface for Instance A, navigate to the SnapReplicate / SNAP HA menu, activate SnapHA and allow replication to come to  SNAPREPLICATE-COMPLETE on all volume(s) again.

  5. Next, In the SoftNAS StorageCenter interface for Instance B, navigate to the SnapReplicate / SNAP HA menu. Click Action and then Takeover as shown below to switch over the NAS services from Instance A to Instance B

  6. Next, please repeat step  #4 on new target (Instance A) 

  7. Once update complete successfully, In the SoftNAS StorageCenter interface for Instance A, navigate to the SnapReplicate / SNAP HA menu, Activate SnapHA 

  8. Test NAS access

  9. Done