Upgrading and updating a Service Fabric standalone cluster

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For any modern system, designing for upgradability is key to achieving long-term success of your product. An Azure Service Fabric standalone cluster is a resource that you own. This article describes what can be upgraded or updated.

Controlling the fabric version that runs on your cluster

Make sure that your cluster always runs a supported Service Fabric version. When Azure announces the release of a new version of Service Fabric, the previous version is marked for end of support after a minimum of 60 days from the date of the announcement. New releases are announced on the Service Fabric team blog. The new release is available to choose at that point.

You can set your cluster to receive automatic fabric upgrades as they are released by Azure or you can manually select a supported fabric version you want your cluster to be on. For more information, read Upgrade the Service Fabric version that runs on your cluster.

Customize configuration settings

Many different configuration settings can be set in the ClusterConfig.json file, such as the reliability level of the cluster and node properties. To learn more, read Upgrade the configuration of a standalone cluster. Many other, more advanced, settings can also be customized. For more information, read Service Fabric cluster fabric settings.

Define node properties

Sometimes you may want to ensure that certain workloads run only on certain types of nodes in the cluster. For example, some workload may require GPUs or SSDs while others may not. For each of the node types in a cluster, you can add custom node properties to cluster nodes. Placement constraints are the statements attached to individual services that select for one or more node properties. Placement constraints define where services should run.

For details on the use of placement constraints, node properties, and how to define them, read node properties and placement constraints.

Add capacity metrics

For each of the node types, you can add custom capacity metrics that you want to use in your applications to report load. For details on the use of capacity metrics to report load, refer to the Service Fabric Cluster Resource Manager Documents on Describing Your Cluster and Metrics and Load.

Patch the OS in the cluster nodes

The patch orchestration application (POA) is a Service Fabric application that automates operating system patching on a Service Fabric cluster without downtime. The Patch Orchestration Application for Windows can be deployed on your cluster to install patches in an orchestrated manner while keeping the services available all the time.

Next steps