Special Considerations for Accelerator

This section provides instructions to change the software version on which Accelerator runs.

Often you will do this to switch all the components (vovserver, vovtasker, vovsh) to a newer version, but you may also switch the vovserver and vovtasker versions separately. For the discussion below, we use 'current' to refer to the version before the change, and 'new' for the version after it.

You will find instructions for three common scenarios below.
  • Cold Upgrade, used when you are also shutting down the Accelerator computers, as for making operating system or hardware upgrades. All components will be on the new version.
  • Hot Upgrade, used to replace the vovserver while allowing jobs to continue to run on the current vovtasker version. vovserver will be on the new version, but vovtaskers stay on the current version.
  • Rolling Hot Upgrade, used to allow the current software version to run jobs after the new version is installed and starts running jobs. This method is recommended when the normal workload consists of large-scale projects.
Important: The upgrade process includes downloading software archive files from the Altair website, which are then unpacked or untarred into a temporary installation directory. The installer will ask for a destination directory.

When choosing the destination for the downloaded software, be careful to select a non-destructive installation path. This ensures the current Altair Accelerator software is not overwritten or otherwise damaged before the new software is installed and activated. Usually the new version will be installed as a sibling of the current version, that is, /tools/rtda/2019.01 for the current and /tools/rtda/2020.1 for the new.