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Upgrading from 7.6 to 7.7#

Use this checklist when upgrading existing 7.6 deployments to 7.7. Run each step in a maintenance window and validate before proceeding.

Table 109 7.6 → 7.7 Upgrade Sequence#

Step

Action

  1. Review

Review the component version delta in the Supported Infrastructure Software table in the 7.7 Release Notes and review per-component release notes for breaking changes, deprecations, and feature additions.

  1. Validate

Confirm hardware, hypervisor (for virtualized deployments), and operating-system compatibility against the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Support Matrix.

  1. Plan rollback

In virtualized deployments, snapshot or back up VMs and capture current driver, operator, and licensing configuration before upgrading. Document the rollback path for each component.

  1. Upgrade host components

Depending on your deployment type (bare metal or virtualized), upgrade the NVIDIA Data Center GPU Driver (applies to bare metal deployments), Virtual GPU Manager (only applies to vGPU for Compute deployments; refer to Installing NVIDIA vGPU for Compute), and DOCA Driver. Fabric Manager is included in the NVIDIA AI Enterprise drivers and updates with the GPU Driver package.

  1. Upgrade Kubernetes operators

Upgrade NVIDIA GPU Operator, Network Operator, NIM Operator, DPU Operator (DPF), and NVIDIA Run:ai (self-hosted) following each operator’s documented upgrade path. NVIDIA Run:ai SaaS upgrades are managed by NVIDIA and require no customer-side upgrade.

  1. Upgrade guest VMs

For virtualized deployments, upgrade NVIDIA vGPU for Compute Guest Driver (refer to Installing the vGPU Guest Driver) and Container Toolkit in tenant VMs.

  1. Verify licensing

Confirm each licensed vGPU VM reaches the NVIDIA License System and shows Licensed status. Refer to Verifying License Configuration.

  1. Validate workloads

Run a representative CUDA or AI/ML workload to confirm performance, feature parity, and operator-managed scheduling behavior.

For lifecycle policy, branch support windows, and migration windows beyond 7.x, refer to the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Lifecycle Policy.