As always, I suggest reading the official documentation in how to properly upgrade vRA 7.0 to 7.0.1
Source: VMware.com
My main vRA test environment is a Simple Install.
In general though it is important to shutdown the environment before performing an upgrade.
Do not shut down the actual server, but shut down the following services on your IaaS Server(s) in the following order
- All VMware vCloud Automation Center agents
- All VMware DEM workers
- VMware DEM orchestrator
- VMware vCloud Automation Center Service
If you use Load Balancers in a distributed environment, disable the secondary nodes and health monitors to ensure the primary is active.
Make sure the repository is running. If successful, no errors are returned and you see a list of models in XML format
https://webhostname/Repository/Data/MetaModel.svc
Next we need to prepare the vRA appliance. By default the disk of the vRA appliance is 18GB in size – we need to increase it to 50GB.
Whilst the documentation doesn’t mention it – you likely need to reboot the appliance for the new disk size to be registered by the OS.
Then once back up – SSH to the vRA appliance.
Stop the following services
- vcac-server
- vco-server
- vpostgres
service vcac-server stop
service vco-server stop
service vpostgres stop
Reconfigure the newly extended disk
Unmount the swap partition
swapoff -a
Delete the existing disk
(echo d; echo 2; echo d; echo 1; echo n; echo p; echo ; echo ; echo ‘+44G’; echo n; echo p; echo ; echo ; echo ; echo w; echo p; echo q) | fdisk /dev/sda
Change the swap partition type
(echo t; echo 2; echo 82; echo w; echo p; echo q) | fdisk /dev/sda
Set bootable flag
(echo a; echo 1; echo w; echo p; echo q) | fdisk /dev/sda
Register changes with kernel
partprobe
Format the new swap partition
mkswap /dev/sda2
Mount the swap partition
swapon -a
Reboot
reboot
Now check that the appliance comes back up 🙂
Now resize the disk
resize2fs /dev/sda1
Confirm that the increase disk size is available
Download the vRA update. Either download the upgrade iso, mount it on the appliance, use a repo or the internet.
Login to the admin interface of your vRA appliance (VAMI)
https://vRA-FQDN:5480
And navigate to the update tab
Click ‘Check Updates’ (Here my vRA appliance has internet access)
And you can see that 7.0.1 is available
However, I downloaded the update iso over night as I can imagine online update servers will be quite busy on day #1 of its release.
Here I mounted the iso and changed the update settings to use the CD
Select ‘Install’
Make sure you don’t close the web interface while the update is running.
Tailing various logs show the progress
- updatecli.log
- vami.log
- horizon.log
Here an example of the vami.log
Example of the updatecli.log – this file will only be created once the actual upgrade process has started (above you can see it only just started downloading the packages from the CD)
Reboot
Once rebooted – verify the new version
Make sure all services are registered. The IaaS services will fail as the services are still stopped – or should be anyway
If you have multiple vRA appliance, boot up the secondary and repeat above steps.
Now change over to your IaaS Server and download the IaaS installer from the vRA installation page.
https://vRA Appliance FQDN:5480/installer/
Download the installer
https://vRA Appliance FQDN:5480/installer/[email protected]
Upgrade the IaaS components in the following order:
- IaaS Web Servers
- Manager Services
- DEM Orchestrators and Workers
- Agents
- Management Agents (Automatically Upgraded)
Execute the installer as admin
Click Next
Accept the EULA
Enter the vRA credentials
As mentioned – my environment is a Simple Install – so I don’t need to upgrade individual components as I only have one IaaS server.
Ensure all pre-requisites are met
Confirm the details and enter your credentials.
Note: SSL is selected by default for the SQL connection. Uncheck unless you have configured secure DB connectivity.
Enter the vRA details, load the default tenant, accept certificates and test both login and FQDN of the IaaS Server
Click Upgrade
Get tea / coffee
Nice to see that the repo is upgraded without hassle – that was right a pain in 6.x upgrades 🙂
Did I mention tea / coffee ?
The upgrade should finish successfully
Click Finish
Now ensure that you can still login and your environment works and it is showing the new version
Done 🙂