Vcsa 6.0 To 6.5 Upgrade Step By Step

We have covered looking at new aspects of vSAN 6.7 as well as vSphere 6.7 and the process of installing vCenter Server as well as Installing and Upgrading ESXi server. Let’s now take a look at the process to upgrade an existing vCenter Server (6.5 in this case) up to vCenter Server 6.7 and the process involved to do that. VMware has made the upgrade process for vCenter Server dead simple with the ISO installer utility and the process really hasn’t changed from the one we saw with the 6.5 upgrade. In this post, we will cover Upgrading to VMware vCenter Server VCSA 6.7 and take a walk through the process from start to finish.

1. Vcsa 6.0 To 6.5 Upgrade Step By Step 1
2. Upgrade Vsphere 6.0 To 6.5

Upgrade Considerations and Upgrade Process

Migrate Windows Based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.7 From the Beginning (Stage -1 ) Migration of Windows based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.5 and 6.7 has no difference in steps, but I wanted show you the complete steps of the Migration so anyone can start and plan their migration without wasting time in their test labs.

Before upgrading your VMware vCenter Server VCSA appliance to version 6.7, there is a very important “order of operations” that you need to follow when upgrading to this latest release of vCenter. We typically may think of the vCenter Server upgrade as the very first step, however, if you have other VMware products in your environment, VMware has published a workflow KB article addressing the order that upgrades need to take place in. Also, keep in mind at this point that certain products such as NSX are currently not supported with vCenter 6.7 at the time of this writing. The order of the upgrade operation as published by VMware is as followings. As you can see, vCenter Server is quite far down the list of upgrades.

1. vRealize Automation (vRA)
2. vRealize Orchestrator (vRB)
3. vRealize Business for Cloud (vRBC)
4. vRealize Operations (vROps)
5. vRealize Operations Manager End-Point Operations Agent
6. vRealize Log Insight (vRLI)
7. vRealize Log Insight Agent
8. VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection (vADP)-based Backup Solution
9. NSX for vSphere (NSX-v)
10. Platform Services Controller External (PSC)
11. vCenter Server
12. vSphere Update Manager (VUM)
13. vSphere Replication (VR)
14. Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
15. ESXi
16. Virtual Hardware
17. VMware Tools

Also, the upgrade considerations KB article by VMware mentions several other notables before upgrading that you definitely want to consider:

Once you have carefully went over the upgrade plan, and have decided to perform your upgrades in the proper order and have then made it to the vCenter Server VCSA 6.7 Upgrade step, let’s take a look at what upgrading a VCSA 6.5 appliance to 6.7 looks like.

Upgrading to VMware vCenter Server VCSA 6.7

After launching the installer.exe from the new vCenter Server 6.7 ISO, choose the Upgrade option to upgrade an existing VCSA appliance to VCSA 6.7.

Launching the installer utility and choosing the Upgrade option for vCenter Server

The process to upgrade to the VCSA 6.7 appliance involves a two stage process as described by VMware in the installer:

• Upgrading the appliance is a two stage process. The first stage involves deploying a new appliance to the target vCenter server or ESXi host. The second stage completes the upgrade process by copying data from the source appliance to the deployed appliance. Make sure you have backed up all data on the source appliance before starting with the upgrade process.

Upgrading VMware VCSA appliance is a two stage process

First things first, accept the EULA.

The first connectivity configuration that is made is connecting to the source VCSA appliance that you want to upgrade. In my case in the home lab test environment, I have a test VCSA 6.5 U1g appliance that I am going to upgrade to VCSA 6.7.

Connecting to the source VCSA appliance that you want to upgrade to VCSA 6.7

Once you click to Connect to Source, you will provide the login credentials for the source VCSA appliance as well as the login credentials for the ESXi host or vCenter Server that manages the source appliance.

Providing connection information for the source VCSA appliance and the vCenter Server that it is managed by

Most likely if using self-signed certificates, you will see a certificate warning.

For the deployment target configuration screen, provide the connection information for the destination ESXi host or vCenter Server instance on which the new VCSA 6.7 appliance will be deployed.

Specify the VCSA 6.7 appliance deployment target

Again, here you will see a certificate warning with self-signed certificates on the destination vCenter Server.

Certificate warning for the appliance deployment target

Choose the destination location, either a datacenter or VM folder.

Select the location to deploy the VCSA 6.7 appliance

Select the compute resource on which to deploy the new VCSA 6.7 appliance.

Select the computer resource to deploy the VCSA 6.7 appliance

Now, we configure the target VCSA 6.7 appliance name for the vSphere inventory as well as set the root password.

Specify the name of the target VCSA 6.7 appliance and the SSH password

Similar to VCSA 6.5 deployment, you can plainly see the deployment size options. Here for home lab purposes, we are deploying the Tiny deployment.

Specify the deployment size of the target VCSA 6.7 appliance

Next, we select the target storage for the destination VCSA 6.7 appliance. Also, you have the option on this screen to enable the Thin Disk Modefor thin provisioning the VCSA 6.7 appliance disks.

Selecting a target datastore and the disk provisioning configuration

On the Configure Network Settings screen, select the network vSwitch you want to use as well as the IP address information for a temporary IP address. Remember with the upgrade, the resulting VCSA 6.7 appliance will assume the IP address of the source VCSA appliance once the upgrade process has made it to the point of powering off the source appliance and assuming identity. Here we simply need to provide a temporary IP address to allow network communication to copy over the data from the source VCSA appliance.

Configure the network settings of the target VCSA 6.7 appliance

On the summary screen for Stage 1, be sure to review the configuration options and click Finish to begin the Stage 1 process of actually deploying the VCSA 6.7 appliance using the configuration options set in the preceding steps.

Summary of settings and ready to complete stage 1 of the VCSA 6.7 upgrade process

Vcsa 6.0 To 6.5 Upgrade Step By Step 1

The process begins and proceeds forward.

The VCSA 6.7 upgrade process begins deploying the new VCSA 6.7 appliance

You will see the new appliance provisioned in the vSphere inventory along with your current VCSA appliance that will eventually be powered off.

Source appliance and the new VCSA 6.7 appliance shown in the same vCenter

The Stage 1 process will eventually complete after the appliance is provisioned. Click Continue to proceed forward with Stage 2.

Stage 1 complete new VCSA 6.7 appliance deployed ready for stage 2

Stage 2 copies data from the source vCenter Server Appliance to the deployed appliance as explained by the installer introductory screen.

Introduction to Stage 2 process of upgrading to VMware VCSA 6.7 appliance

VMware has our backs here, pre-upgrade checks will check the environment to make sure everything is at least verified to work as expected.

Any findings from the pre-upgrade checks will be displayed on the Pre-upgrade check result screen.

PreUpgrade Check results for upgrading to VCSA 6.7 appliance

On the select upgrade data screen, you select the data you want to copy from the source VCSA appliance. The options are:

• Configuration data
• Configuration and historical data (events and tasks)
• Configuration and historical data (events, tasks, and performance metrics)

The installer will show the data sizes of each option. A nice feature as well is the estimated downtime that is displayed for the configuration option.

Selecting between the upgrade data options with the VCSA 6.7 upgrade

Choose whether or not to join the CEIP program.

Stage 2 is ready to complete. Be sure to backup your source appliance data. Check the box and then click Finish.

Summary of Stage 2 configuration ready to complete

There will be a Shutdown Warning displayed to notify you that the source vCenter will be shut down once the network configuration is enabled on the destination VCSA 6.7 appliance.

The three step Stage 2 process begins:

• Copying data from source VCSA to target VCSA 6.7
• Setting up target VCSA 6.7 appliance and starting services
• Importing copied data to the target VCSA 6.7 appliance.

Stage 2 begins copying data from source VCSA appliance to the target VCSA 6.7 appliance

Stage 2 setup target VCSA 6.7 appliance and start services

Stage 2 Import copied data into the target VCSA 6.7 appliance

After the third step finishes, you will see a Messages box that shows some reminders after the upgrade finishes, including TFTP settings with Auto Deploy and new TLS standards with VCSA 6.7.

Conveniently, the link to the new VCSA 6.7 appliance web client is linked from the Stage 2 Complete screen at the bottom.

Upgrade to VCSA 6.7 appliance is complete

Takeaways

There you have it! The process of Upgrading to VMware vCenter Server VCSA 6.7 is as straightforward as you would expect from the now very mature VCSA platform for vCenter Server. The upgrade process went buttery smooth. There are no surprises here compared to the VCSA 6.5 upgrade. The new look and feel of the installer with the Clarity UI is extremely nice however and makes the process that much more pleasing to step through. Be sure to keep the order or upgrading in mind as many complex environments may be running many VMware products integrated with vCenter Server. Know at this point at least at the time of this post, NSX is not compatible currently with VCSA 6.7. So know your environment, read the documentation, and make sure to follow what is supported in production. Home labs are another story 😉

Fishing clash para pc baixar. Last week VMware launched vSphere 6.7. In this blog post I show how easy it is to upgrade a vCenter Server 6.x appliance to a new vCenter Server 6.7 appliance using the graphical interface (GUI) upgrade. The GUI upgrade uses a two stage process:

• Stage 1: Deploy a new vCenter Server 6.7 appliance
• Stage 2: Transfer the services and configuration data from the old to the new appliance

Upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance includes deploying a new appliance (version 6.7). The configuration and data is transferred from old (6.0 or 6.5) appliance to the new vCenter Server 6.7 Appliance. The old appliance is still available in a powered down state in the vCenter Server inventory after the upgrade.

vSphere 6.7 is the last release to include vCenter Server for Windows. After this release, vCenter Server for Windows will not be available! So make sure that all new deployments and upgrades are using the the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)!

New enhancements

Some cool enhancements of the vCenter Server 6.7 appliance are:

• The vCenter Server with Embedded PSC supports Enhanced Linked Mode. This gives the following benefits:
  • No load balancer required for high availability and fully supports native vCenter Server High Availability.
  • SSO Site boundary removal provides flexibility of placement.
  • Supports vSphere scale maximums.
  • Allows for 15 deployments in a vSphere Single Sign-On Domain.
  • Reduces the number of nodes to manage and maintain.
• vSphere 6.7 supports repointing a vCenter Server to another external Platform Services Controller in the same SSO site and different SSO site within the same SSO domain
• vSphere 6.7 supports repointing a vCenter Server (Appliance only) to another external Platform Services Controller in a different SSO domain.
• The vSphere Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) on port 5480 has some great new enhancements:
  • Upgraded Clarity interface
  • Dedicated monitor tab
  • Services tab. See the status of the VCSA services and the ability to: stop, start and restart services. So no CLI is needed for that anymore!
  • Backup scheduler. The backup scheduler let you schedule a backup of the VCSA and select how many backups are retained. The supported protocols for backup locations are: FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS and SCP.
• The vSphere Client (HTML5) has updated and includes new workflows on Update Manager and vSAN for example.

Before upgrading

Before upgrading make sure to check this:

• Check the compatibility of the VMware and third party products you are using. When writing this blog the following VMware products are not compatible (yet) with vSphere 6.7:
  • NSX
  • Horizon. Horizon 7.4 is not compatible with the Instant Clone API used in vSphere 6.7. Instant Clone support for vSphere 6.7 will be available in an upcoming Horizon release.
  • VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO)
  • VMware vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC)
  • vCloud Director
• For the upgrade order of multiple VMware products see the “Update sequence for vSphere 6.7 and its compatible VMware products (53710)” KB, link
• It’s only possible to upgrade the vCenter Server Appliance version 6.0 or 6.5 to 6.7.
• It’s not supported to upgrade from 6.5 U2 to 6.7! It will be provided in a future release! With vSphere 6.7 Update 1 (not available yet) it’s possible to upgrade from vSphere 6.5 U2 to vSphere 6.7 U1.
• For vSphere 5.5 you must first upgrade to vSphere 6 or vSphere 6.5 before upgrading to vSphere 6.7
• Make sure you have enough capacity in the cluster to add an extra vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). The old appliance can be removed when the upgrade is successful. Here’s an overview of the hardware specifications needed.
• In vSphere 6.7, only TLS 1.2 is enabled by default. vSphere 6.7 disables TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocols for improved security. Some applications might support only the older protocols. To revert TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocols use the TLS reconfigurator tool. The tool can be found in the appliance under: /usr/lib/vmware-TlsReconfigurator/VcTisReconfigurator.
• Windows 2003 and XP are no longer supported.

Platform Services Controller (PSC) hardware sizing

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) hardware sizing

• Use a temporary fixed IP address
• Make sure that you have the SSO administrator and root account information of the existing VCSA
• Have a backup of the VCSA
• Disable Fully Automated DRS during the upgrade

The upgrade steps

In the following steps a single vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded PSC and vCenter Server role will be upgraded to version 6.7.

• Mount the VCSA ISO (VMware-VCSA-all-6.7.0-8217866.iso)
• Navigate to the <drive letter>:vcsa-ui-installerwin32 folder and open the installer.exe
• Choose for the upgrade option. With the option you can upgrade a PSC and vCenter Server appliance.

• 1. The upgrading process will enter “stage 1”, deploy the appliance.

• 2. Accept the End user License Agreement.

• 3. Connect to the source vCenter Server 6.x appliance and ESXi server. Enter the SSO and root username of the VCSA and the ESXi server that manages the source appliance. Accept the certificate warning.

• 4. Select the deployment target. I use the same ESXi host where the source VCSA is running. Accept the certificate warning.

• 5. Set up the target appliance VM name and root password. The upgrade will maintain the original FQDN name of the VCSA. This name will be used as VM name in the VCSA inventory and can be changed later!

• 6. Select the (new) size of the new appliance.

• 7. Select the datastore

• 8. Configure the network settings. Make sure to use an new temporarily IP address for the upgrade. After the upgrade the new appliance will use the original IP address!

• 9. Click finish to start stage 1

• After a while the following message appears and you’re ready to continue to stage 2.

• 1. Introduction. Stage 2 will copy data from the source vCenter Server Appliance to the new deployed appliance.

• 2. A pre-upgrade check will run, after the pre-upgrade check has finished warning messages will be shown such as:
  • Disable Fully Automated DRS during the upgrade
  • Files that cannot be used with Update Manager 6.7 will not be copied from the source.
  • An NSX extension has been found that may not work after the upgrade

• 3. The data types that needs to migrated can be selected. A new cool thing is that the amount of time that’s involved is displayed for the Configuration data.

• 4. Configure the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

Upgrade Vsphere 6.0 To 6.5

• 5. Ready to start fase 2 by selecting “I have backed up the source vCenter Server and all the required data from the database.

• A shutdown warning is displayed, the source VCSA will be shut down.

• The data transfer and appliance setup is running

• A couple of messages will be displayed about for example Auto Deploy and that TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are disabled in vSphere 6.7.

• Stage 2 is completed and the vCenter Server Appliance is deployed.

• Now you can access the vCenter Server by using vSphere Client (HTML5), the vSphere Web Client or VMware Appliance Management Interface by using the original FQDN of the vCenter Server Appliance.

After the upgrade the VCSA is upgraded to version 6.7.

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