Part 7 – Upgrade vCenter VCSA 6.0 (or 6.5) to 6.7

In this blog, we will upgrade our vCenter Server from 6.5 to 6.7.

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
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 upgrade

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 into 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

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 6.7 ISO from vmware.com

12- Mount the ISO

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 from 6.5 to 6.7

15- Click Next to begin the procedure.

16- Accept the licensing agreement and click Next.

17 – We will now connect to our vCenter that needs to be upgraded. Enter the source appliance vCenter FQDN or IP address 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 reside and click Next.

18- Specify the target ESXi host to deploy the new appliance to. 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. This name can be changed later

20- Specify the Deployment size as needed.

21- Select the datastore to use and click Next. I’ve chosen the disk type as thin disk

22- 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.

23- Validate all settings and Click Finish

24 – The Stage 1 phase of our vCenter now begins and this will basically spin a new vCenter on the ESXi host with the temporary IP we created earlier.