topic Major operating system upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations? in Dynatrace Managed Q&A

Major operating system upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations?

gilles_tabary — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:09:58 GMT

Hello.

I use a "Managed" cluster. I fail to find explicit documentation on how to, or what to (not) do in order to major upgrade the OS version on my hosts running my ActiveGate's (in my case RHEL 7.x to RHEL 8.x). Am I wrong thinking this could be different from a minor OS patch (which BTW cause us no problem) ?

I see For ActiveGate

Doc "Update ActiveGate" (https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/shortlink/update-activegate) : But this for AG software update, it says nothing specific about OS upgrade / update.

I see for Cluster nodes, but AFAIU not applicable for ~~ActiveGate~~

Doc "Apply operating system patches to a node" (Apply operating system patches to a node) : fine
Forum "Update operating system in cluster nodes with Dynatrace running during the upgrade" (https://community.dynatrace.com/t5/Open-Q-A/Update-operating-system-in-cluster-nodes-with-Dynatrace-running/m-p/210630) : fine

Regards.

(For the record : https://one.dynatrace.com/hc/en-us/requests/178985 )

Re: Major operating system (OS) upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations ?

Babar_Qayyum — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 11:23:52 GMT

Hello @gilles_tabary

Yes. There are no specific Kernel or any other recommendations mentioned except the supported OS versions e.g. 7.9, 8.4, 8.6, 8.7, 9.0, 9.1, and with the passage of time we are getting operating systems support changes.

Regards,

Babar

Re: Major operating system (OS) upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations ?

gilles_tabary — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:51:05 GMT

Thanks a million for the input. To complete it, this what support said :

There isn't any required steps for the ActiveGate when updating the OS, as we said it's good to backup:

/var/lib/dynatrace/config
/var/lib/dynatrace/ssl

but the ActiveGate is just a program, so as long as it's running on a supported OS, it'll just run. I would:

stop ActiveGate -> upgrade OS -> start ActiveGate

Regards.

Re: Major operating system (OS) upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations ?

Lukasz_Halman — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 06:50:07 GMT

Yes, stop AG services, then upgrade the operating system. Upgrade will definately involve reboot at the end and AG services should automatically start.

The directory quoted is incorrect. Depending on AG purpose it will be subset of:
- /var/lib/dynatrace/gateway
- /var/lib/dynatrace/synthetic
- /var/lib/dynatrace/zremote
- /var/lib/dynatrace/remotepluginmodule

Re: Major operating system upgrade on ActiveGate hosts: any doc or official recommendations?

gilles_tabary — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:01:32 GMT

Hello.

In my case OS upgrade RHEL 8 -> RHEL 9 broke the AG Synthetic

systemctl status vuc : displayed a missing chromium bowser (file not found)
had to set up epel yum repo for RHEL 9, then re-install rpm dependencies for chromium and chromium, following https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/shortlink/private-synthetic-location#redhat.