[Spacewalk-list] How to use Spacewalk to upgrade RHEL to higher version(s)?

[spacewalk at epperson.homelinux.net]

On Fri, November 30, 2012 16:55, Jacob Yundt wrote:
> IBM AIX supports in place upgrades between major releases (5.3 -> 6.1 ->
> 7.1).  The process is pretty simple and works well with their included
> utilities (NIM).

They control both the hardware and software/driver base.  It's a much
simpler scenario than for Linux.

But yes, AIX does a lot of tight-integration stuff very well.  I can
remember the lvm utilities in 3.4 being better than what we have right now
in Red Hat.

>
> In terms of "what people expect now": most, if not all, of the enterprise
> Linux/UNIX users I encounter need a direct upgrade path between major OS
> releases.

Just curious:  where are they finding that?  Our installed Linux base is
almost entirely Red Hat and OEL, neither of which offer an
upgrade-in-place.

We time our major Linux version upgrades to hardware replacement cycles
and build the new servers in parallel with the old ones.  We can then do
cutovers and have the old base to revert to if there's a major f-up.