Upgrade vCenter VCSA 7. 0.3 to 8. X

In this blog, we will upgrade our vCenter Server from 7.0.3 to 8. X.

Pre-Upgrade Checks

Make sure to make a note of the following configurations:

The Installed vCenter | ESX | NSX version details and download an ISO locally and keep it ready.
Make a note of all License keys

User accounts and any custom permissions
VM Tags
VM Annotations

VM folders
Export VM Folder Permissions
Distributed switch backups

Network settings for the vCenter server
NTP settings
HA and DRS settings

Note all DRS Rules ( Affinity and Anti-Affinity rules )
CPU compatibility settings
Are all your hosts running the same model of hardware?

NSX Backups
vCenter Backups
vSAN config

Backup Server Compatibility
SAN Compatibility – VASA, vVols etc
Run an RVTools Report

Disable DRS prior to the upgrade
Ensure root and admin passwords have not expired.
Ensure all vCenters in linked mode are healthy

Ensure the root partition / has enough space for the vCenter upgrade.
ssh access must be enabled

Reducing/Cleaning VMware Analytics Service data

Check certificates, or expired trusted root certificate

Upgrade Process

The upgrade process consists of two stages:

Deploying a new VMware vCenter Server 8.0 virtual appliance.

Migration of existing data and setting up all VMware vCenter Server 8.0 appliance services.

Upgrade WorkFlow

The upgrade sequence of VMware vCenter Server 8 follows these steps.

Deploy VMware vCenter Server 8.0 virtual appliance.

Assign a temporary IP address to the new VMware vCenter Server 8.0 virtual appliance.
Copy all data from the source vCenter to the new vCenter 8.0 appliance.
Power down the old vCenter Server appliance.

Switch over the old IP address from the old vCenter to the new VMware vCenter 8.0 appliance.
Import all data into the new vCenter Server 8.0 appliance.

Preparing for the vCenter Appliance Upgrade

1- We begin by verifying the health of the vCenter appliance. As shown below, this is a quick indication that your vCenter will need more memory and the likely scenario will be vCenter upgrade will fail so I’ll add some additional memory to the vCenter.

2- With the compute raised, let’s now back up the appliance configs such as NSX, vCSA appliance etc. Log in to each appliance and backup the appliance configs

3- Login to the vCenter via vsphere-client to check if vCHA is enabled on your vCenter.

4- Backup distributed switch config – Choose Export Config

5- Choose the option to include all port groups

6- Save the config to a local path

Procedure to Disable vCHA

If vCHA is not enabled in your environment, move to Step 10.

7- The next step to upgrade vCenter is to first remove our vCHA configuration from our vCenter. Go to Configure > Edit > Remove vCenter HA

8- Delete the Passive and Witness nodes

9- Validate if vCHA configuration is removed

**10-** We will now need to ***disable DRS*** to prevent our vCenter from being moved around during the upgrade. You might as well choose Affinity rules to tie the vCenter to a set of hosts.

11- Snapshot your existing vCenter server with the option to quiesce memory.

12- Download vCSA 8.0 ISO from vmware.com

Stage 1 – Deploying the vCenter Server 8.0 Virtual Appliance

13- Run the installer from the supported OSs by double-clicking the installer.exe file.

14- Choose the option to upgrade an existing vCenter appliance.

15- Click Next to begin the procedure.

16-Accept the licensing agreement and click Next.

17- We will now connect to our vCenter which needs to be upgraded. Enter the source appliance vCenter FQDN or IP address and click Connect to the source. Input the SSO User name, SSO password, and the vCSA Appliance root password. Locate the host we attached the vCenter to previously, enter the ESXi host where our source vCSA resides and click Next.

18-Specify the target ESXi host to deploy the new appliance. In our lab, we will just deploy the new vCenter to our ESX-01 nested host

19-Give the new vCenter VM a name, we can choose any name here and there is no name resolution required.

20-Specify the Deployment size as needed.

22-Choose a datastore to deploy the new vCenter 8 appliance and enable thin disk mode.

23- We will need to provide this new vCenter with a temporary IP address which is only used only during the deployment process to copy the data from our production vCenter. The IP address of our production vCenter will be the same as the source appliance. Once the Stage2 process is completed, the new vCenter 8 will take the network identity of the old old VCSA.