Upgrade vCenter Service Appliance (VCSA) 5.0 to 5.5

Posted on by Jordansphere

1) Deploy the appliance. In this case I am using the .ova download. You can also download it in .ovf with .vmdk format.

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digi_vcenter_upgrade6      

I left all fields blank so my DHCP server would assign in.

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2) Start the VM up (ensuring you have at least the same RAM and CPUs as the current VCSA)

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3) Browse to the new appliance in the web browser. In this case https://10.0.10.170:5480 . The default username and password root &  VMware

4) A wizard will appear. Click Next then upgrade from a previous version

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5) Copy the key.

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6 )Log into the OLD VCSA and select the upgrade tab. Set role as source and click Set role. This will shut down the vCenter service on the old vcenter

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7)  Click Establish Role tab and paste key from NEW vcenter into the Remote Appliance Key field then click Import remote key. 

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8) Copy the Local Appliance Key from the old VCSA and paste it into the NEW VCSA r field. Then click Next

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  9) If there is an SSL error then click Replace the SSL Certificates and click Next

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10) As this is an upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1 – SSO will need to be configured/freshly installed. In my case I used the Embedded SSO and I input a new password. Then click Next

 

11) Review hosts and ensure there are no errors.

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12) Make sure you have a backup/snapshot of the old VCSA then click Next

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The following appeared on the ESXi host

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I then tailed the log by  connecting to new appliance (10.0.10.170) via SSH with root/vmware authentication. This will give you a status update.

# tail -f /var/log/vmware/vami/upgrade.log


DB20000I  The SQL command completed successfully.

Number of rows exported: 11

DB20000I  The SQL command completed successfully.

 

DB20000I  The SQL command completed successfully.

DB20000I  The SQL command completed successfully.

DB20000I  The TERMINATE command completed successfully.


   Database Connection Information

 Database server        = DB2/LINUXX8664 9.7.2
 SQL authorization ID   = VC
 Local database alias   = VCDB

<etc>

 

Note: The whole process took around 4 hours to complete after I pressed confirm. I'm not sure if this is normal or not. I suspect the vpx_event_arg table had over million rows in it.