Vsphere Upgrade

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vSphere Upgrade

First Published On: 04-26-2018


Last Updated On: 06-04-2020

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Table Of Contents

1. vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Video Series


1.1.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 1: vSphere News
1.2.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 2: Pre-Upgrade
Considerations
1.3.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 3: The Upgrade Process
1.4.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 4: Upgrading and
Migrating vCenter Server
1.5.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 5: Upgrading Your ESXi
Host, VM Tools and VM
1.6.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 6: Upgrading Storage
and Networking
1.7.vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 7: Post-Upgrade
Considerations
2. Pre-Upgrade Considerations
2.1.Release Notes
2.2.eBook: Upgrading to vSphere 6.7
2.3.Interoperability Matrices
2.4.VMware Knowledge Base
2.5.vSphere Documentation
2.6.Update sequence for vSphere 6.7 and its compatible VMware
products
3. Platform Services / vCenter Server Upgrade
3.1.Walkthrough: Upgrading vCenter Server 6.5 to vCenter Server 6.7
3.2.Walkthrough: Upgrading vCenter Server 6.5 to vCenter Server 6.7
using VCSA CLI
3.3.Walkthrough: Windows vCenter Server 6.5 Embedded Migration to
VCSA 6.7
3.4.Walkthrough: Windows External PSC 6.5 Migration to an External
PSC 6.7 Appliance
3.5.Walkthrough: Windows vCenter Server 6.5 External Migration to
VCSA 6.7
3.6.Blog: Upgrading Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server
via the CLI Installer
3.7.Blog: Upgrading vCenter Server via the GUI Installer
4. ESXi Host Upgrade
4.1.Walkthrough: Using the Update Manager Interface to Upgrade
from ESXi 6.5 to 6.7
4.2.Walkthrough: Upgrading a cluster with VUM
4.3.Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 3: Upgrading vSphere Hosts

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vSphere Upgrade

4.4.Walkthrough: Using the Update Manager 6.7 Interface to Patch


VMware ESXi 6.7 Hosts
4.5.Video: Faster Host Upgrades to vSphere 6.7
5. VMware Tools and VM Compatibility Upgrade
5.1.Walkthrough: Updating Tools in a vSphere Environment
5.2.Walkthrough: Upgrading VM Tools using vSphere Update
Manager
5.3.Walkthrough: Upgrading VM Compatibility using vSphere Update
Manager
5.4.Blog: Six Methods for Keeping VM Tools Up to Date
5.5.Blog: Automating Upgrade of VMware Tools and VM Compatibility
5.6.Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 4: Upgrading VMware Tools
and VM Compatibility
6. VMFS Upgrade
6.1.Blog: Automating Migration of VMFS-5 to VMFS-6 Datastores
6.2.Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 5: Upgrading VMFS Storage
7. Virtual Distributed Switch Upgrade
7.1.Blog: Automating the Upgrade of the Virtual Distributed Switch
7.2.Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 6: Upgrading vSphere
Networking
8. Post-Upgrade Considerations
8.1.vCenter High Availability
8.2.File-Based Backup and Restore
8.3.Blog: vCenter Server Converge Tool
8.4.Walkthrough: Converging an External vCenter Deployment
8.5.Walkthrough: Converging a Load Balanced External vCenter
Deployment

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

1. vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track -


Video Series
This video series is focused on covering the steps of the vSphere Upgrade
Process.

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

1. 1 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 1: vSphere News

Click to see topic


media

1. 2 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 2: Pre-Upgrade


Considerations

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Click to see topic


media

1. 3 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 3: The Upgrade Process

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Click to see topic


media

1. 4 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 4: Upgrading and


Migrating vCenter Server

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Click to see topic


media

1. 5 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 5: Upgrading Your ESXi


Host, VM Tools and VM

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Click to see topic


media

1. 6 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 6: Upgrading Storage


and Networking

© 2020 VMware, Inc


vSphere Upgrade

Click to see topic


media

1. 7 vSphere Upgrade: The Inside Track - Part 7: Post-Upgrade


Considerations

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Click to see topic


media

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2. Pre-Upgrade Considerations

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2. 1 Release Notes

click to see the


content

2. 2 eBook: Upgrading to vSphere 6.7

click to see the


content

2. 3 Interoperability Matrices

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click to see the


content

2. 4 VMware Knowledge Base

click to see the


content

2. 5 vSphere Documentation

click to see the


content

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2. 6 Update sequence for vSphere 6.7 and its compatible VMware


products

click to see the


content

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3. Platform Services / vCenter Server


Upgrade
Topics related to upgrading Platform Services and vCenter Server

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3. 1 Walkthrough: Upgrading vCenter Server 6.5 to vCenter Server 6.7

Click to see topic


media

3. 2 Walkthrough: Upgrading vCenter Server 6.5 to vCenter Server 6.7


using VCSA CLI

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Click to see topic


media

3. 3 Walkthrough: Windows vCenter Server 6.5 Embedded Migration


to VCSA 6.7

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Click to see topic


media

3. 4 Walkthrough: Windows External PSC 6.5 Migration to an External


PSC 6.7 Appliance

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Click to see topic


media

3. 5 Walkthrough: Windows vCenter Server 6.5 External Migration to


VCSA 6.7

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Click to see topic


media

3. 6 Blog: Upgrading Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server


via the CLI Installer

Upgrading Platform Services Controller and vCenter


Server via the CLI Installer
The first topic we will cover in our Automating your vSphere Upgrade
series is updating our core infrastructure. Upgrading Platform Services
Controller(PSC) and vCenter Server via the CLI installer.

In our workshops one of the common things I hear is that most folks
aren’t using the CLI based tools that have been included in the

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installer. I am a huge fan of these as they make migrations and


upgrades seamless–especially when having to perform the task if you
have multiple PSC’s and vCenter Servers. Using the CLI tools don’t
have to be intimidating, as we go through this blog we will cover some
how-to’s and benefits of using the CLI based approach.

When we start our vSphere Upgrade the first thing we want to do is to


upgrade our PSC and vCenter Server before updating other
components. If we happen to be using an Embedded PSC deployment
the upgrade is simple, we can do the upgrade in one step (Step 1 and
Step 2 combined). However, if we are using an External PSC
deployment we must upgrade all of our PSC’s within the same SSO
domain first prior to upgrading any vCenter Servers–so this becomes
a multi-step process.

For this upgrade scenario we will be performing an upgrade from an


External PSC deployment using appliances on vSphere 6.0 to an
External PSC deployment using appliances on vSphere 6.7.

Prepare Your JSON Configuration File for CLI

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Upgrade
When doing a CLI based upgrade, we use a configuration file template
(JSON) that is part of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) ISO. When
you mount the ISO you will see a directory labelled vcsa-cli-installer
and within that folder is a directory called templates. Once you are
here you have the option to see the CLI templates for install, migrate
and upgrade. As a reminder a migration is when we are moving from a
vCenter Server on Windows, and an upgrade is when we are moving
from VCSA to VCSA.

Since we are doing an upgrade we will browse to that folder and we


are left seeing a vcsa6.0 and vcsa6.5 directory. The information we
need when coming from each version is different so there is a unique
set of templates for each version. Since we are upgrading from a
vSphere 6.0 deployment we will head into the vcsa6.0 directory.

Once we are in this directory we can see a few different templates. We


have a template for an embedded deployment, external PSC and
external vCenter Server. Each template has an associated version
whether or not we will be connecting to a vCenter Server or an ESXi
host directly. The embedded template is for an embedded
deployment which does both PSC and vCenter Server at the same
time as we mentioned above, and the PSC and VCSA are separate
templates as we need to do these one at a time.

Since we have an External PSC deployment and we are using a


vCenter Server, we will first open the PSC_on_VC.json.

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When opening this file at first glance you might say WOAH! That looks
complicated, but there is quite a bit of extra text explaining each field.
Lets fill in the blanks with the required information and take another
look.

This looks a lot better, we can clearly see the details it is asking for.
The vCenter Server to deploy the new appliance to, the appliance
information, the temporary IP to use, and then last but not least the
source information for the appliance we are upgrading. If we have a
deployment where there are multiple PSC’s we could see how easy it

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would be to make a copy of this file, and edit lines 17 and 41 putting in
the second PSC and then re-saving. How much time saving could this
be!? With vSphere 6.5 allowing 10 PSC’s per SSO domain and vSphere
6.7 allowing 15 this could be quite a bit of time saved!

Next up, its time to upgrade our vCenter Server. To get our JSON file
ready we will head back and grab the vCSA_on_VC.json template.
Also remember that if you happen to have multiple VCSA’s to upgrade
you can easily update lines 16 ,17 and 40 to upgrade other appliances
in your environment.

Certain sensitive fields such as passwords can be left blank if


chosen. When the CLI installer is run it will prompt for the
password during runtime.

Now that we have prepared our templates for our upgrade, the next
section we will jump into how to actually perform our upgrade using
the CLI.

More information on preparing the JSON template can be found here.

Upgrade a vCenter Server Appliance or


Platform Services Controller Appliance by
Using the CLI

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CLI templates in hand, its now for the fun. Using these templates we
will automate our upgrade. vSphere 6.0 originally introduced this
concept of a CLI based tool, however its been enhanced with vSphere
6.7. With vSphere 6.7 we now have a “batch template” technology
built into the installer. Prior to vSphere 6.7 we had to run the installer
against a single JSON file and wait for it to finish, we would then have
to manually kick off the second JSON file when the previous one
completes. With the batch upgrade we can put multiple JSON files into
a single directory and point the installer to the directory and it is smart
enough to map out the dependencies and upgrade the PSC’s first and
then the vCenter Servers.

Before we actually perform our upgrade, I want to explain some of the


benefits of the CLI installer. If we happened to be using the GUI based
upgrade, everything in that upgrade would have to be manually
entered into the GUI and obviously that is susceptible to typos and
errors. Also, if we happened to enter some incorrect information and
had to retry our upgrade we would again have to re-type all that
information. What if we had a way to perform an upgrade test without
ever touching our production environment? With the CLI Installer we
do! And its called a pre-check. When running the CLI installer with the
–precheck-only flag we have the ability to go through a full dry run of
our upgrade. If we happened to have a typo, insufficient capacity or
any other errors it would spit this out, and we could easily correct the
settings.

To run our CLI based installer we will mount our vSphere 6.7 media as
that is the version we are going to. We will again navigate to the vcsa-
cli-installer directory. From here depending on the operating system
of the machine we are on we will either navigate to the lin64, win32 or
mac folder to use the supported installer for that operating system.

Here we will see quite a few files, but the one we want to focus on is
vcsa-deploy.exe in the win32 folder since I will be running this from a
windows machine. If we run .\vcsa-deploy.exe upgrade it will give us
the details on how to properly use the CLI tool.

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As I mentioned previously one of the benefits of using the CLI tool is


that you can execute a pre-check of your template against the
environment to make sure things will pass. Usually with upgrades and
migrations a big issue we see with them failing is due to a smaller
appliance size being chosen for the new appliance or insufficient
capacity in the vCenter Server environment. In this environment we
will execute our vcsa-deploy utilizing the pre-check option and see our
results.

To run the pre-check I ran the following command: .\vcsa-deploy.exe


upgrade –no-ssl-certificate-verification –accept-eula –acknowledge-
ceip –precheck-only C:\scripts\6.7\upg60to67\

I chose to point this to the folder to take advantage of the batch


upgrade vs pointing it to the individual file, as I mentioned earlier it is
smart enough to map out the dependencies as we can see from the
below image.

Once the pre-check runs through we will either get a success or


failure. In the image below my vCenter Server services were not
running so the pre-check failed.

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Now that we have the service running and re-run our pre-check we can
see everything is successful and we can now proceed to remove the –
precheck-only flag from our command.

.\vcsa-deploy.exe upgrade –no-ssl-certificate-verification –accept-


eula –acknowledge-ceip C:\scripts\6.7\upg60to67\

The upgrade process is now happening without any additional user


input. If you need to step away for lunch or if a co-worker needs you
there is no additional action that is needed until the end. If you were
using the GUI based approach once Stage 1 where the appliance is
deployed is complete you have to manually start Stage 2 to configure
the upgraded appliance. With the CLI based installer this is not
needed. When our upgrade is complete we will be presented with the
vCenter Server and login information as we can see below.

More information on Upgrading your PSC and vCenter Server


via the CLI can be found here.

Conclusion
Automating your vSphere Upgrade does not have to be scary or hard,
as we went through the steps its actually quite easy. Now that we have
our PSC and vCenter Server updated we can now proceed to our next
step which is automating the upgrade of our ESXi hosts.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/upgrading-

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platform-services-controller-and-vcenter-server-via-the-cli-
installer.html

Date: 2018-10-29

Title

3. 7 Blog: Upgrading vCenter Server via the GUI Installer

vSphere Upgrade Series Part 2: Upgrading vCenter


Server
In part 1 of the vSphere Upgrade Series, Preparing to Upgrade, we
covered getting started with our prerequisites, compatibility, and also
prepared the vSphere Update Manager (VUM) server to migrate its
data to the VCSA 6.7 during the upgrade. In part 2 we will cover the
vCenter Server Upgrade to 6.7. Let’s begin.

vCenter Server Upgrade


Now that VUM has passed its Migration Assistant pre-checks, we can
move to the vCenter Server Upgrade. I am also assuming here that you
have a backup of the vCenter Server prior to upgrading.

We begin by mounting the VCSA installation ISO to an Admin


workstation that is on a routable network to the vCenter Server we will
be upgrading. Browse the ISO and open the “vcsa-ui-installer” folder
then the corresponding folder for your OS. I am running this from a
Windows system so I will open the “win32” folder.

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Next run the application “installer.exe” with Administrator Rights. This


will launch the vCenter Server Appliance Installer to begin Stage 1.

NOTE: The upgrade of the vCenter Server is broken up into two stages, Stage 1 &
Stage 2. Stage 1 is the deployment of a new VCSA and Stage 2 is where all of the
configuration data and inventory are imported into the newly upgraded vCenter
Server.

Begin by clicking Upgrade.

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Stage 1
Step 1: This is the introduction and an explanation of the two Stages
of the Upgrade. Click Next to continue.

Step 2: Review the EULA, check the box to accept the terms of the
license agreement, and then click Next to continue.

Step 3a: Enter the source vCenter Server that you will be Upgrading by
its FQDN or IP address. Click Connect To Source to reveal the
additional fields.

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Step 3b: Complete each required field for SSO as well as the
information about the ESXi host that manages the source vCenter
Server. Then click Next to continue.

Step 3c: You will prompted to verify the SSL Certificates. Review and
click Yes to continue.

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Step 4a: Specify the target host or vCenter Server to which the new
VCSA will be deployed to. Click Next to continue.

Step 4b: When prompted, review the SSL Certificate and thumbprints
then click Yes to continue.

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Step 5: Specify the Virtual Machine name (this is only the Inventory
name) and set the password for the VCSA that will be deployed during
the upgrade. Click Next to continue.

NOTE: During an upgrade of the source VCSA, a new VCSA virtual machine is
deployed and configurations are imported to the new vCenter Server Appliance.
The source VCSA will be powered off and should be either removed from
inventory, or have its network adapter disabled after the upgrade completes.

Step 6: Select the deployment size for the vCenter Server. If more
storage is needed than the default sizing, choose the “Storage Size”

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dropdown for more choices. Storage size changes will be reflected in


the table below the selection dropdown in the Storage (GB) column.

It may be necessary to edit the storage size from Default to Large or X-


Large if importing the optional Historical & Performance Data (see
image for more details).

NOTE: If you plan to use vCenter High Availability (VCHA) after you upgrade your
vCenter Server, the smallest deployment size supported for VCHA is Small.

Click Next to continue.

Step 7: Select the datastore location for the vCenter Server Appliance.
The option to also Enable Thin Disk Mode is available, if you require it.

Click Next to continue.

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Step 8: Configure the temporary network settings that are required to


deploy the new VCSA. Be sure to add at least 1 DNS server. Once all
required fields are completed, click Next to continue.

Step 9: Review all settings of Stage 1 prior to Upgrade. Once verified,


click Finish to continue and kick off Stage 1 of the vCenter Server
Upgrade.

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Stage 1 of deploying the new vCenter Server Appliance is now


underway.

Once the VCSA is deployed and all RPM installs are completed in
Stage 1, you can click Continue to move on to Stage 2.

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Stage 2
Stage 2 of the upgrade is when the data from the source vCenter
Server as well as vSphere Update Manager (VUM) is imported into the
newly deployed VCSA.

Step 1: Review the details of the Stage 2 process and then Click Next
to continue.

This will kick off a series of pre-checks on the source vCenter Server.

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Step 2: Once pre-checks have completed, results will be shown on


screen. Review any warnings given, as well as the resolutions to these
warnings. In my upgrade scenario I had a few warnings, one reminding
me to change DRS which we did before we began, and others that I
validated were ok to proceed in this situation.

Review and click Close to continue.

Step 3: Select the data that you will require to be imported. The
Inventory & Configuration data is moved by default, any historical data
(events, tasks, performance, etc) is optional to import. This is offered
to shorten the upgrade and migration of data into the new VCSA.
Make the required choice, and then click Next to continue.

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Step 4: Join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program


or CEIP. Joining this program is optional but when you do join, it helps
VMware to improve our products and services, fix problems and
advise you on how best to deploy and use our products. CEIP is also
required to enable the vSAN health check services.

To understand this better, please review additional information


regarding the CEIP and its purpose.

Once a choice has been made, click Next to continue.

Step 5: Review all setting choices here and once complete, click Finish
to continue.

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The prompt here is a reminder that the source vCenter Server will be
powered down once all network configuration is enabled on the
destination VCSA.

Click OK to continue.

Stage 2 begins. Data is exported from the source vCenter Server and
prepared for import.

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Next, vCenter Server services are started on the destination VCSA.

Last, the copied data from the source vCenter Server is imported to
the destination VCSA.

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When all data has been imported to the destination VCSA, the process
is complete. Messages are presented at this step as informational,
such as a notice about TLS changes in vSphere 6.7.

Review these notices then click Close to continue.

Stage 2 of the vCenter Server Upgrade is now completed.

Click Close to continue.

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Closing the installer will launch the vCenter Server splash page
allowing you to login via the vSphere Client on HTML5.

Since the vSphere Web Client (Flex) is now deprecated, I will use the
HTML5 vSphere Client because it is now our default client and it
contains 95% of all workflows as compared to vSphere 6.5 Update 1
that contained 90% of workflows. The HTML5 vSphere Client will be
fully featured by the Fall of 2018.

Click the button “Launch vSphere Client (HTML5)” to continue.

Enter the administrator credentials (SSO administrator or other


administrator with access to vSphere) and login to view the vCenter

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Server and hosts.

Now we will verify the vCenter Server is now running on version 6.7.
We do this by clicking on the inventory name of the vCenter Server
and viewing the Version Information from the Summary tab.

Enable DRS
Since we disabled DRS during our preparing to upgrade post, it should
be enabled once again. We begin this task by highlighting the cluster
and then clicking on the Configure tab to view vSphere DRS settings.
If you had set DRS to Manual versus disabling, now is the time to

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change that also.

Next click Edit to continue.

In the Edit Cluster Settings window, click the slider switch to enable
vSphere DRS then click OK to save. DRS is now enabled on the cluster.

NOTE: You can also quickly perform these actions via PowerCLI with
the ‘Set-Cluster’ cmdlet.

Enable DRS:

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Set DRS automation level to Fully Automated:

Final Steps
After the vCenter Server Upgrade is completed, it is important to call
out that power off operations only happen automatically for the
vCenter Server, the VUM server must be powered off manually.

As a best practice, I suggest removing the Network Card from the old
vCenter Server as well as renaming the VM to differentiate it within
inventory and mitigate any accidental power on operations. Notice the
new VCSA (VCSA67) virtual machine inventory name that was given.
Note that renaming the VM does not change the FQDN of the VCSA,
this is just the inventory name of the VM.

Lastly, be sure to power off the VUM server since it is no longer


required to be running.

Rollback
Did your maintenance window close or maybe you encountered
another issue during an Upgrade? Not to worry, rollback is quite
simple. In this vSphere environment that we just upgraded we have no
external PSCs, only the vCenter Server Appliance to worry about. If we
did have an external PSC, we would first power off the newly deployed
PSC, restore the PSC instance from backup, and if it was joined to an

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Active Directory domain, re-join it to the domain.

In our case without an external PSC we would, power off the newly
deployed vCenter Server Appliance 6.7, bring the old vCenter Server
Appliance 6.0 instance online (If already powered off, simply power it
on. If not powered off, a restart is required), if it was joined to an
Active Directory domain, it may need to be joined again (if your
vCenter Server was Windows, be sure to have a local account on the
server and do not rely on any cached credentials). Lastly we wait for all
vCenter Server services to start and log in to the vSphere Web Client
to verify the vSphere inventory.

Please review KB2146453 for more guidance on rollbacks.

Conclusion
Remember; Focus, Plan, Execute!

We have successfully executed our vCenter Server Upgrade! We


started by reviewing our prerequisites & compatibility, gathering our
data, and then upgrading our vCenter Server and vSphere Update
Manager (VUM) from vSphere 6.0 Update3 to 6.7. Our VUM was
migrated to the 6.7 VCSA also during this upgrade scenario. In the
next vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will move to upgrading our
vSphere 6.0 ESXi hosts to vSphere 6.7 by utilizing vSphere Update
Manager to remediate.

Please do not hesitate to post questions in the comments section of


this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/07/vsphere-
upgrade-series-part-2-upgrading-vcenter-server.html

Date: 2018-10-29

Title

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4. ESXi Host Upgrade


Topics related to upgrading ESXi Hosts

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4. 1 Walkthrough: Using the Update Manager Interface to Upgrade


from ESXi 6.5 to 6.7

Click to see topic


media

4. 2 Walkthrough: Upgrading a cluster with VUM

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Click to see topic


media

4. 3 Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 3: Upgrading vSphere Hosts

vSphere Upgrade Series Part 3: Upgrading vSphere


Hosts

In Part 1 Preparing to Upgrade & Part 2 Upgrading vCenter Server of


the vSphere Upgrade Series we prepared our environment for an
Upgrade and then completed the vCenter Server & vSphere Update
Manager (VUM) upgrades to version 6.7. In this post we will cover the
upgrade process for Upgrading vSphere Hosts (ESXi) via vSphere

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Update Manager (VUM). Using vSphere Update Manager (VUM ) is a


consistent way to keep updates and upgrades in order as well as
managed in a repeatable fashion for vSphere Administrators.

I should also mention that utilizing VUM is not the only way to perform
ESXi host upgrades. Upgrades for ESXi hosts can be done Interactively
with a CD/DVD or USB drive, with vSphere Auto Deploy, scripted, or
via esxcli commands. All methods may have different requirements
which should be reviewed. Each method listed are valid and supported
for upgrading ESXi hosts.

Note: In regards to ESXCLI Upgrades & Secure Boot; “If your host was upgraded
using the ESXCLI command then your bootloader wasn’t upgraded and doesn’t
persist the signatures. When you enable Secure Boot after the upgrade, an error
occurs. You can’t use Secure Boot on these installations and will have to re-install
from scratch to gain that support.” – Mike Foley’s Secure Boot for ESXi Blog

Preparing VUM
In this environment I will be using VUM to manage the upgrades of
four ESXi hosts on vSphere 6.0 to vSphere 6.7. Before we begin
upgrading the vSphere ESXi hosts we will need to have the VMware
vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7 installation ISO (named similar to this;
“VMware-VMvisor-Installer-<vSphere_version>-
<build_number>.x86_64.iso“) which is available on My.VMware.com.
A vSphere Update Manager (VUM) Upgrade Baseline is also required
since we will be using VUM to perform the upgrades of our ESXi hosts.
I will cover how to create the baseline that we will use during this post.
Last, we need at least one vSphere ESXi host to upgrade with our VUM
baseline.

We begin by uploading the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7


installation ISO file to the VUM server so we can create and attach a
baseline. From the top menu, click on Update Manager.

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The Home screen for VUM is displayed.

Click on ESXi images, and then Import.

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Browse to find the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7 installation


ISO. Once selected, the upload process starts on its own.

When complete, click Import to complete the action and save the ESXi
Image to VUM.

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From the Update Manager ESXi Images screen, we can see the image
is loaded into Update Manager for use with a Baseline.

Create an Update Manager Baseline


Next we will create a baseline for our Upgrade within vSphere Update
Manager. VUM baselines are host baselines used to upgrade objects in
your vSphere inventory. Baselines can be predefined, system-
managed, or customized to fit your needs. Please review vSphere
Update Manager Installation & Administration guide for more details
on baselines and baseline Groups.

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Click on Baselines to begin. From this screen click on NEW, then New
Baseline.

Fill out the name & description for the baseline, click the radio button
for “Upgrade” as the content type for the baseline, and click Next.

Select the ESXi 6.7 Image to use with this baseline, click Next to
continue.

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Review all setting selections and then click Finish.

A new baseline is available now to attach to ESXi hosts. Next we can


begin to remediate our vSphere Hosts by leveraging this upgrade
baseline.

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Upgrading vSphere Hosts


Now that our vSphere ESXi image has been uploaded to VUM and an
upgrade baseline has been created, we move forward to upgrade our
vSphere 6.0 hosts to vSphere 6.7.

Begin by moving to the Hosts and Clusters view.

Next, click on the Datacenter object (#1) then click on Updates (#2)
and last click on Attach (#3).

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In the pop up window, select the vSphere 6.7 Upgrade baseline so that
we can attach it to our vSphere 6.0 hosts. Click OK to continue.

Once selected, the new upgrade baseline shows as ‘attached’ to the


hosts within the cluster.

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Click Check Compliance to begin the process of Update Manager


validating that the hosts to be remediated are indeed eligible. Note
that you may need to manually refresh to see current results.

Once the Compliance Checks are completed we can quickly see that
our vSphere hosts need attention. This is a good and expected result.
What this means is that the vSphere 6.7 code is not running on these
vSphere hosts.

Note: If the status was to read ‘Compliant‘ vs. ‘Non-Compliant‘ it would indicate
that the hosts that were checked, already have vSphere 6.7 software installed.

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A good practice is to validate that vSphere hosts are ready for


Remediation. Click Pre-Check Remediation to validate that the hosts &
cluster are in compliance. This pre-check will report any issues with
the vSphere cluster. If issues are found they are reported along with
helpful notes on the actions that must be taken before a vSphere host
is remediated.

**HA Cluster Settings Consideration**

PLEASE READ BEFORE MOVING FORWARD: If you would like to edit


the HA Cluster settings for items such as Admission Control, etc. you will
need to launch the vSphere Web Client (Flex) since that workflow is not

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yet available in the vSphere Client (HTML5). Below is an example of what


that screen looks like when editing via the vSphere Web Client (Flex).

After opening the vSphere Web Client (Flex), begin by clicking


on the vSphere cluster, then click on Update Manager, click
on Go to Admin View to continue.

From the vSphere Update Manager administrator view, click


Manage, then Settings, and last click on Host/Cluster Settings
to make any required changes.

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**These settings are optional and not required in


every situation. Edit settings with caution only after
reviewing vSphere documentation.

Continue with Remediation…

An option to Open Pre-Check Documentation is available if the


machine you are working from is connected to the internet.

Once all edits, changes, and reviews have been completed, click Done.

Click on Remediate to begin upgrading vSphere hosts.

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Review and Accept the End User License Agreement (EULA), then click
OK to continue.

Select the hosts that you would like to Remediate with the vSphere 6.7
Upgrade baseline. You can choose to do all hosts within a cluster or a
select few. Click OK to continue.

When all hosts are selected, one host at a time is placed in


Maintenance Mode and VMs are evacuated to other hosts within the
cluster. Updates are applied before the host is rebooted and has the
new vSphere version installed.

Note: “Remediation of hosts in a cluster requires that you temporarily disable


cluster features such as VMware DPM and HA admission control. Also, turn off FT

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if it is enabled on any of the virtual machines on a host, and disconnect the


removable devices connected to the virtual machines on a host, so that they can be
migrated with vMotion” – vSphere Update Manager Installation & Administration
Guide

Below we can see our vSphere host going into Maintenance Mode and
preparing to Upgrade. Once this host is done and back online after its
reboot, Update Manager will move to the next ready host in the
cluster to update in the same manner.

As each vSphere host is upgraded, the Update Manager screen will


display the new versions. We see that 2 vSphere hosts out of 4 have
been successfully upgraded to vSphere 6.7.

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Success! All 4 vSphere hosts are running vSphere 6.7 software.


vSphere versions can be validated by viewing Update Manager via the
Updates tab. We can see “All Hosts Compliant” as well as below in the
Attached Baselines section compliance shows Compliant.

Validation per host can also be reviewed by clicking on the name of


the host in inventory and then the Updates tab. This view will show the
vSphere version as well as Build numbers.

Conclusion
We have successfully executed Upgrading vSphere Hosts with

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vSphere Update Manager! We began in Part 1 of the blog series by


reviewing our prerequisites & compatibility, gathering our data. In Part
2 we upgraded vCenter Server & migrated VUM from vSphere 6.0
Update3 to 6.7.

In the next vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will focus on upgrading


VMware Tools & VM Compatibility (hardware version) for virtual
machines in the vSphere 6.7 environment.

Please do not hesitate to post questions in the comments section of


this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/07/vsphere-
upgrade-series-part-3-upgrading-vsphere-hosts.html

Date: 2018-10-29

4. 4 Walkthrough: Using the Update Manager 6.7 Interface to Patch


VMware ESXi 6.7 Hosts

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Click to see topic


media

4. 5 Video: Faster Host Upgrades to vSphere 6.7

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Click to see topic


media

None

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5. VMware Tools and VM Compatibility


Upgrade
Topics related to upgrading VMware Tools and VM Compatibility

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5. 1 Walkthrough: Updating Tools in a vSphere Environment

Click to see topic


media

5. 2 Walkthrough: Upgrading VM Tools using vSphere Update


Manager

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Click to see topic


media

5. 3 Walkthrough: Upgrading VM Compatibility using vSphere Update


Manager

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Click to see topic


media

5. 4 Blog: Six Methods for Keeping VM Tools Up to Date

Six Methods for Keeping VM Tools Up to Date

When it comes to keeping VM Tools up to date, there are six different


approaches that vSphere administrators can use. That may sound like
a lot, but after seeing each of the various options, it is clear that the
intention is to accommodate nearly any workflow customers require
for flexible datacenter operations. These different techniques allow
optimizing either for automation and standardization or for separation
of responsibilities. A previous article provides an overview of the three

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types of VM Tools.

VMware Tools Status is Relative to Underlying


Host
Recall that each ESXi host has a storage location for VM Tools
installers, which is a configurable option and visibly referenced by the
/productLocker symlink. The target can be either local to each host or
point to a centralized repository of VM Tools on a shared datastore.
For more information about setting up a shared Tools repository, see
this earlier post or KB 2004018.

VM Tools status for any given VM is always in the context of the


underlying host. As demonstrated below, two different versions of
Tools are considered “Current” because the underlying hosts are not
identical.

When certain virtual machine events occur, such as power-on or


vMotion, the version of VM Tools running on that guest is compared
to the version associated with the underlying ESXi host. If the host has

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a newer version, the VM is considered out of date.

Note that there is no mechanism for VMs running on vSphere to


contact the mother ship and learn about new versions of VM Tools –
only the VM to host relationship is relevant. This explains why a VM
may suddenly complain about having out of date VM Tools after
migrating from one host to another – the destination host has a more
recent version in the product locker.

VM Tools Type Determines Update Choices

Recall from the previous post that there are three types of VM Tools –
the familiar Tools ISOs for all supported operating systems, plus two
additional offerings in the form of binary packages for Linux. There are
several ways to initiate VM Tools updates from vSphere or from within
a guest. The following applies only to Windows and Linux guests using
VM Tools ISOs except where noted. The VM Tools Linux packages –
OVT and OSP – are not managed via vSphere, so they can only be
installed and updated from within each guest OS using native package
management tools.

Six Ways to Keep VM Tools Updated


1. Automatic update on VM boot

The simplest way to keep VM Tools up to date is to check a box and


forget about managing this element of infrastructure. Upon VM
reboot, such as after installing guest OS patches, VM Tools status will
be checked and an update installed if needed. In many cases, this will
result in one additional reboot after VM Tools installation completes.

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This approach may be viable for less-critical workloads, perhaps labs


or test/dev environments. Imagine a scenario where VMs are
rebooting unexpectedly due to a widespread infrastructure outage.
After scrambling to get applications back online, administrators could
find themselves facing unanticipated subsequent reboots if a VM
Tools update happened to be available. This is an edge case, but one
to keep in mind.

2. Initiate update to one or more VMs through the vSphere UI

In the vSphere Web Client, when a VM indicates that VM Tools are


outdated an adjacent button can be used to automatically initiate an
update. This can be done interactively or in a completely hands-off
fashion. In the latter case, administrators also have the option of
suppressing any potential reboots on Windows VMs – this is a good
option that enables coordination of reboots required after routine
guest OS patching.

Important note for guests other than Windows and Linux: Solaris,
FreeBSD, and Mac OS VM Tools can only be updated using the manual
interactive method. There is currently no automatic Tools update for
these guests.

Going a step further, it is also possible to select multiple VMs in the


Web Client UI and initiate a VM Tools update on all of them at once.

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3. VMware Update Manager: immediate, scheduled, or on boot

VMware Update Manager (VUM) has two very different roles to play
when it comes to updating VM Tools. The first one has to do with
fetching updated VM Tools ISOs in the form of the ‘tools-light’ VIB
that is offered when needed in the normal ESXi patch stream. This
patch is then pushed out to all managed hosts according to baselines
established by administrators. Once this occurs, individual VMs will
begin to detect that a new version of VM Tools is available and will be
eligible for update.

The second role VUM has in managing VM Tools is to trigger updates


for individual VMs according to baselines. Keep in mind that VUM
does this work by leveraging the vSphere methods described in the
two previous sections. In one mode, VUM can be used to make a bulk
configuration change to multiple VMs so that a Tools update is
checked and performed as necessary on each guest reboot, just like

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an administrator can do using the technique shown in #1 above. The


advantage of using VUM is that many VMs can be configured or un-
configured for this option at once.

The other mode VUM uses is to trigger a VM Tools update either


immediately or at a scheduled time, just as an administrator can do
manually as described in #2 above. One added benefit of using VUM
to initiate these updates in this way is the ability to also remediate
powered-off or suspended VMs, subsequently returning them to their
initial state after update.

4. In-guest update – delegating control to app owners

For scenarios where application owners demand tight control over


activities that occur in the guest OS, there is an option to allow in-
guest updates of VM Tools. A tray icon in Windows will indicate that an
update is available, and the VM Tools configuration dialog box will
permit interactive initiation of an update at a convenient time.

For equivalent functionality from a command-line utility, vmware-


toolbox-cmd is offered for Linux as well as Windows guests. Keep in
mind that for Linux this is only for the VM Tools ISOs, since OVT and
OSP use a different process, as described in #6 below.

Enable guest-initiated updates by modifying the


isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable VM setting, which can be
done easily to one or more VMs with PowerCLI:

5. Mass updates through PowerCLI automation

In very large environments or for those that have established more


mature operational processes, PowerCLI provides a powerful option

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for updating VM Tools. This approach can target particular groups of


VMs in many convenient ways, such as by cluster, by guest OS version,
tags, VM state, or other vSphere attributes.

6. Native Linux package management processes

By nature of their design, Linux guests running OSPs or OVTs update


VM Tools as part of a broader patching and updating workflow used
for other components. This allows administrators to leverage existing
Linux package managers or broader patch management and
monitoring solutions without need to coordinate with vSphere
administrators.

7. BONUS: VM Tools Upgrade Method (pun intended)

For advanced use cases where vSphere APIs are being used for deeper
integration with other processes, consider the UpgradeTools_Task for
programmatic upgrades of VM Tools.

Summary
With these flexible means of updating VM Tools, there is a suitable
approach for any VMware datacenter, whether the requirement is
centralized control, automation, delegation to app owners, or
integration with existing patch management processes.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/03/six-methods-
for-keeping-vm-tools-up-to-date.html

Date: 2018-10-29

Title

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When it comes to keeping VM Tools up to date, there are six different


approaches that vSphere administrators can use. That may sound like
a lot, but after seeing each of the various options, it is clear that the
intention is to accommodate nearly any workflow customers require
for flexible datacenter operations. These different techniques allow
optimizing either for automation and standardization or for separation
of responsibilities. A previous article provides an overview of the three
types of VM Tools.

VMware Tools Status is Relative to Underlying


Host
Recall that each ESXi host has a storage location for VM Tools
installers, which is a configurable option and visibly referenced by the
/productLocker symlink. The target can be either local to each host or
point to a centralized repository of VM Tools on a shared datastore.
For more information about setting up a shared Tools repository, see
this earlier post or KB 2004018.

VM Tools status for any given VM is always in the context of the


underlying host. As demonstrated below, two different versions of
Tools are considered “Current” because the underlying hosts are not
identical.

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When certain virtual machine events occur, such as power-on or


vMotion, the version of VM Tools running on that guest is compared
to the version associated with the underlying ESXi host. If the host has
a newer version, the VM is considered out of date.

Note that there is no mechanism for VMs running on vSphere to


contact the mother ship and learn about new versions of VM Tools –
only the VM to host relationship is relevant. This explains why a VM
may suddenly complain about having out of date VM Tools after
migrating from one host to another – the destination host has a more
recent version in the product locker.

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VM Tools Type Determines Update Choices

Recall from the previous post that there are three types of VM Tools –
the familiar Tools ISOs for all supported operating systems, plus two
additional offerings in the form of binary packages for Linux. There are
several ways to initiate VM Tools updates from vSphere or from within
a guest. The following applies only to Windows and Linux guests using
VM Tools ISOs except where noted. The VM Tools Linux packages –
OVT and OSP – are not managed via vSphere, so they can only be
installed and updated from within each guest OS using native package
management tools.

Six Ways to Keep VM Tools Updated


1. Automatic update on VM boot

The simplest way to keep VM Tools up to date is to check a box and


forget about managing this element of infrastructure. Upon VM
reboot, such as after installing guest OS patches, VM Tools status will
be checked and an update installed if needed. In many cases, this will
result in one additional reboot after VM Tools installation completes.

This approach may be viable for less-critical workloads, perhaps labs


or test/dev environments. Imagine a scenario where VMs are
rebooting unexpectedly due to a widespread infrastructure outage.
After scrambling to get applications back online, administrators could
find themselves facing unanticipated subsequent reboots if a VM
Tools update happened to be available. This is an edge case, but one
to keep in mind.

2. Initiate update to one or more VMs through the vSphere UI

In the vSphere Web Client, when a VM indicates that VM Tools are


outdated an adjacent button can be used to automatically initiate an
update. This can be done interactively or in a completely hands-off
fashion. In the latter case, administrators also have the option of
suppressing any potential reboots on Windows VMs – this is a good
option that enables coordination of reboots required after routine
guest OS patching.

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Important note for guests other than Windows and Linux: Solaris,
FreeBSD, and Mac OS VM Tools can only be updated using the manual
interactive method. There is currently no automatic Tools update for
these guests.

Going a step further, it is also possible to select multiple VMs in the


Web Client UI and initiate a VM Tools update on all of them at once.

3. VMware Update Manager: immediate, scheduled, or on boot

VMware Update Manager (VUM) has two very different roles to play
when it comes to updating VM Tools. The first one has to do with
fetching updated VM Tools ISOs in the form of the ‘tools-light’ VIB
that is offered when needed in the normal ESXi patch stream. This
patch is then pushed out to all managed hosts according to baselines
established by administrators. Once this occurs, individual VMs will
begin to detect that a new version of VM Tools is available and will be
eligible for update.

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The second role VUM has in managing VM Tools is to trigger updates


for individual VMs according to baselines. Keep in mind that VUM
does this work by leveraging the vSphere methods described in the
two previous sections. In one mode, VUM can be used to make a bulk
configuration change to multiple VMs so that a Tools update is
checked and performed as necessary on each guest reboot, just like
an administrator can do using the technique shown in #1 above. The
advantage of using VUM is that many VMs can be configured or un-
configured for this option at once.

The other mode VUM uses is to trigger a VM Tools update either


immediately or at a scheduled time, just as an administrator can do
manually as described in #2 above. One added benefit of using VUM
to initiate these updates in this way is the ability to also remediate
powered-off or suspended VMs, subsequently returning them to their
initial state after update.

4. In-guest update – delegating control to app owners

For scenarios where application owners demand tight control over


activities that occur in the guest OS, there is an option to allow in-
guest updates of VM Tools. A tray icon in Windows will indicate that an

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update is available, and the VM Tools configuration dialog box will


permit interactive initiation of an update at a convenient time.

For equivalent functionality from a command-line utility, vmware-


toolbox-cmd is offered for Linux as well as Windows guests. Keep in
mind that for Linux this is only for the VM Tools ISOs, since OVT and
OSP use a different process, as described in #6 below.

Enable guest-initiated updates by modifying the


isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable VM setting, which can be
done easily to one or more VMs with PowerCLI:

5. Mass updates through PowerCLI automation

In very large environments or for those that have established more


mature operational processes, PowerCLI provides a powerful option
for updating VM Tools. This approach can target particular groups of
VMs in many convenient ways, such as by cluster, by guest OS version,
tags, VM state, or other vSphere attributes.

6. Native Linux package management processes

By nature of their design, Linux guests running OSPs or OVTs update


VM Tools as part of a broader patching and updating workflow used
for other components. This allows administrators to leverage existing
Linux package managers or broader patch management and
monitoring solutions without need to coordinate with vSphere
administrators.

7. BONUS: VM Tools Upgrade Method (pun intended)

For advanced use cases where vSphere APIs are being used for deeper
integration with other processes, consider the UpgradeTools_Task for
programmatic upgrades of VM Tools.

Summary
With these flexible means of updating VM Tools, there is a suitable
approach for any VMware datacenter, whether the requirement is

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centralized control, automation, delegation to app owners, or


integration with existing patch management processes.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/03/six-methods-for-
keeping-vm-tools-up-to-date.html

Date: 2018-10-29

5. 5 Blog: Automating Upgrade of VMware Tools and VM Compatibility

Automating Upgrade of VMware Tools and VM


Compatibility
Next up in our Automating your vSphere Upgrade blog series is your
VMware Tools and VM Compatibility. Upgrading these both have
different requirements so we will cover when and how you should
upgrade your VMware Tools and VM compatibility in the below post.

Upgrading VMware Tools


When it comes to keeping your VMware Tools up to date we have a
few options but I will focus on two of my favorite methods. Keeping

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VMware tools up to date is very important as VMware includes drivers


and tools to make sure your VM’s run optimally with the latest
features.

Eric Gray of our CPBU Technical Marketing Team covers a few


considerations and methods in depth in the following blog post Six
Methods for Keeping VM Tools Up to Date.

Checking VMware Tools Compliance

Before we can start to update our VMware Tools it might be a good


idea to understand which VMs in our environment are currently out of
compliance, the easiest way to check if a VM if out of compliance is to
view it via the vSphere Client and it will show you details such as the
version and compliance.

However, since we are talking about automation lets show this another
way using PowerCLI.

Get-Folder -name Testing | Get-VM | % { get-view $_.id } | select


name, @{Name=“ToolsVersion”; Expression=
1
{$_.config.tools.toolsversion}}, @{ Name=“ToolStatus”;
Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus}}|Sort-Object Name

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Using this PowerCLI one-liner we are able to see more information at


scale, we can see that within our folder we actually have 3 VMs that
are out of compliance. To remediate these to the latest version its
actually quite simple with PowerCLI as well.

To make the information clearer on what needs an update we will use


the same search only looking for VMs where ToolStatus is
guestToolsNeedUpgrade. To do that we will use the following one-
liner.

Get-Folder -name Testing | Get-VM | % { get-view $_.id } |Where-


Object {$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus -like
"guestToolsNeedUpgrade"} |select name,
1
@{Name=“ToolsVersion”; Expression=
{$_.config.tools.toolsversion}}, @{ Name=“ToolStatus”;
Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus}}| Sort-Object Name

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Upgrading VMware Tools via PowerCLI

Now that we know which VMs need tools update we can actually go
forth and upgrade tools. That is quite simple we can do this using the
Update-Tools PowerCLI cmdlet. Using our existing one-liner from
above we will just append Update-Tools to update the VMs with tools
currently out of compliance.

Get-Folder -name Testing | Get-VM | % { get-view $_.id } |Where-


Object {$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus -like
"guestToolsNeedUpgrade"} |select name,
1 @{Name=“ToolsVersion”; Expression=
{$_.config.tools.toolsversion}}, @{ Name=“ToolStatus”;
Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus}}| Update-Tools -
NoReboot -VM {$_.Name} -Verbose

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You may have noticed that all the VMs had their updates kicked off at
the same time and this may not be ideal, this is one way that the
Update-Tools cmdlet works, however we can get around this by
storing the VMs within a variable and then using a loop process them
one at a time. This is definitely preferable as it will limit the impact to
the environment.

$OutofDateVMs = Get-Folder -name Testing | Get-VM | % { get-view


$_.id } |Where-Object {$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus -like
"guestToolsNeedUpgrade"} |select name, @{Name=“ToolsVersion”;
Expression={$_.config.tools.toolsversion}}, @{ Name=“ToolStatus”;
Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus}}ForEach ($VM in
$OutOfDateVMs){Update-Tools -NoReboot -VM $VM.Name -
Verbose}

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Now our tools are up to date!

For more information on upgrading your VMware Tools via PowerCLI


you can find more information here.

Upgrading Tools Automatically on Reboot

Using VM options to keep VMware Tools up to date is also another


method to automatically keep VMs up to date. Enabling the “Check
and upgrade VMware Tools before each power on” advanced setting
use to not be used because of the additional reboot it would cause for
virtual machines. Keep in mind that with Windows Server 2016
VMware Tools no longer need a reboot on upgrade, it can be safe to
enable this setting and have VMs stay up to date on every reboot.
However this may not be applicable to all situations, so another
recommendation would be to enable this for a lab environment or
non-critical workloads.

The easy way to enable this option is to log into the vSphere Client,
edit the VM settings and enable the setting.

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After all this a post on automation, so lets see if we can find a way to
use PowerCLI to modify the VM’s setting so this gets easier when we
have a large environment.

Here we can see which VMs have the automatic upgrade set and
which ones are configured for manual. Utilizing a filter we can look for
objects that are set for manual and then configure them to be set for
upgradeAtPowerCycle

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$ManualUpdateVMs = Get-Folder Testing|Get-VM|Get-View |


Where-Object {$_.Config.Tools.ToolsUpgradePolicy -like
1
"manual"}|select name,@{N='ToolsUpgradePolicy';E=
2
{$_.Config.Tools.ToolsUpgradePolicy } }Foreach ($VM in
3
($ManualUpdateVMs)) {$VMConfig = Get-View -VIObject
4
$VM.Name$vmConfigSpec = New-Object
5
VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec$vmConfigSpec.Tools =
6
New-Object
7
VMware.Vim.ToolsConfigInfo$vmConfigSpec.Tools.ToolsUpgra
8
dePolicy =
9
"UpgradeAtPowerCycle"$VMConfig.ReconfigVM($vmConfigSpe
c)}

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If we do a final check we can see that all VMs are now set to
upgradeAtPowerCycle.

Upgrading VM Compatibility
When it comes to upgrading your VM Compatibility this is something
that should be done with caution. Upgrading VM Compatibility aka
VM Hardware is like pulling out the motherboard and replacing it with
a new one, so this should only be done when features and
functionality in a higher level are needed. Our current recommended
level is Hardware Version 11 as it handles remediation from current
security threats.

Prior to upgrading your VM Compatibility you should always make


sure VMware Tools are up to date first as new drivers can be required
for the new virtual hardware.

As I mentioned previously prior to upgrading your VM Compatibility I


recommend taking a snapshot or a backup of the virtual machine in
case a rollback is needed.

Checking VM Compatibility Version

Its quite easy to see the current version of VM Compatibility via the
vSphere Client, however when checking the current levels across our
entire vCenter Server we may want to automate this Below you will
find a quick and easy one-liner to identify the VMs and their current
VM Compatibility version.

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As we can see above a few VMs are currently running v14 which is
compatible with vSphere 6.7 only. This was needed for us to take
advantage of VBS and TPM security features.

Again, we should only upgrade VM Compatibility when additional


functionality is needed.

Upgrading VM Compatibility Version

We have identified a need to upgrade VM08 also to v14 to take


advantage of Per-VM EVC so we can handle the automation of the VM
compatibility upgrade. We can do this again quite easily with
PowerCLI.

If you wish to do this via the vSphere Client my colleague Nigel Hickey
covers this in his blog series here. However, we are talking automation
here so lets jump into the quick script to accomplish this.

1
2 $HardwareUpdateVMs = Get-Folder Testing | Get-VM
3 VM08Foreach ($VM in ($HardwareUpdateVMs)) {$VMConfig =
4 Get-View -VIObject $VM.Name$vmConfigSpec = New-Object
5 VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec$vmConfigSpec.Schedul
6 edHardwareUpgradeInfo = New-Object -TypeName
7 VMware.Vim.ScheduledHardwareUpgradeInfo$vmConfigSpec.S
8 cheduledHardwareUpgradeInfo.UpgradePolicy =
9 “always”$vmConfigSpec.ScheduledHardwareUpgradeInfo.Versi
1 onKey = “vmx-14”$VMConfig.ReconfigVM($vmConfigSpec)}
0

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This will not automatically upgrade the VM Compatibility, unlike


VMware Tools this can not be done with the virtual machine Powered
On. The next time the VM is rebooted it will be shutdown, the
compatibility will be upgraded and then be powered back on.

More information on upgrading VM Compatibility can be found here.

Conclusion
Automating your VMware Tools and VM Compatibility upgrades do
not need to be hard, we have quite a few ways to help you with this
and help this blog has helped educate you on some additional
methods. For more information on Automating your vSphere Upgrade
be sure to check out the full series here.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/automating-
upgrade-of-vmware-tools-and-vmware-compatibility.html

Date: 2018-10-29

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/automating-upgrade-of-
vmware-tools-and-vmware-compatibility.html

5. 6 Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 4: Upgrading VMware Tools


and VM Compatibility

vSphere Upgrade Series Part 4: Upgrading VMware


Tools and VM Compatibility
Welcome back to the vSphere Upgrade Blog for the next piece of our
Upgrade Journey. We began in Part 1 of this blog series by reviewing
our prerequisites & compatibility, gathering our data. In Part 2 we
upgraded vCenter Server & migrated VUM from vSphere 6.0 Update3
to 6.7. Part 3 guided us through preparing vSphere Update Manager

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(VUM) by creating an Upgrade Baseline and using that baseline to


remediate our vSphere 6.0 Update 3 ESXi hosts to vSphere 6.7.

In part 4 of the vSphere Upgrade Series we will cover Upgrading


VMware Tools and VM Compatibility.

VMware Tools and Virtual Machine Compatibility comes in at Step 4


when upgrading a vSphere environment. Although both of these
components hold much value for virtual machines (VM) when
upgraded, caution should always be at the forefront of upgrading the
VM Compatibility version. I mention caution because upgrading the
VM Compatibility version may not always be necessary to perform
unless specific features are needed.

Upgrading VMware Tools


Let’s start with VMware Tools. VMware Tools is a set of services and
modules that enable several features in VMware products for better
management of, and seamless user interactions with, guests operating
systems. Although a guest operating system can run without VMware
Tools, we suggest to always run the latest version of VMware Tools in
your guest operating systems to access the latest features and
updates.

VMware Tools can be upgraded manually, via vSphere Update


Manager, PowerCLI, or by configuring virtual machines to check and

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install newer versions of VMware Tools when they reboot. The guest
OS checks the version of VMware Tools when you power on a Virtual
Machine (VM). The status bar of the VM displays a message when a
new version is available.

In my vSphere 6.7 lab environment I will be upgrading VMware Tools


on a Windows 2012 server VM via the vSphere Client (HTML5) which is
considered a manual upgrade. I will begin by logging into the vSphere
Client and check the current version of VMware Tools running on my
VM.

Step1: Click on the VM to be upgraded and then from the Summary


tab review the version of VMware Tools.

Step 2: Click More info to reveal additional information (optional), then


click Upgrade VMware Tools to begin the process

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Step 3: Once you click Upgrade VMware Tools, you will be presented
with 2 types of upgrades. Choose an upgrade type, click Upgrade to
continue. (In my scenario, I have selected an Automatic Upgrade)

An Interactive Upgrade allows the disk image for VMware Tools to


be mounted to the guest OS. This allows the admin doing the
work to console into the VM to run the install wizard.
An Automatic Upgrade does what it implies by automatically
upgrading VMware Tools without interacting with the guest OS. It
also allows the guest OS to reboot automatically if needed.

Step 4: Review the Recent Tasks pane to monitor the VMware Tools
upgrade progress

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Step 5: Once the upgrade is complete, we verify the upgrade by


clicking More info to display VMware Tools’ version & status.

Upgrading VMware Tools with PowerCLI


VMware Tools updates can also be performed via PowerCLI. The
cmdlet “Update-Tools” can be used to upgrade the VMware Tools on
the specified virtual machine guest OS. VMware Tools must be
installed prior to updating it. After VMware Tools is updated, the
virtual machine is restarted unless the NoReboot parameter is
specified.

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An example usage is shown below that can update VMware Tools on a


virtual machine specified by its guest operating system.

Example scripts for VMware Tools Management can also be found on


our VMware GitHub pages.

Upgrading Virtual Machine Compatibility


Now we will review Virtual Machine Compatibility. Virtual machine
compatibility determines the virtual hardware available to the VM,
which corresponds to the physical hardware available on the vSphere
host. Upgrading the compatibility level will allow the VM to take
advantage of additional hardware features available to the virtual
machine.

In vSphere 6.7, Virtual Machine Compatibility (Virtual Hardware


Version) 14 was introduced. VM Compatibility version 14 includes
support for features such as; Per-VM EVC, Virtual TPM 2.0, and
Microsoft Virtualization Based Security (VBS). Note that when
upgrading VM Compatibility some applications or the OS to may have
issues working properly. I suggest only upgrading VM Compatibility if
you require a feature that comes with the newer hardware version.

In my lab example I will upgrade VM Compatibility from version 11


(ESXi 6.0 and later) to version 14 (ESXi 6.7 and later) via vSphere
Client (HTML5).

Step 1: Right click on the VM to be upgraded (or use the Actions menu
once the VM is highlighted), choose Compatibility and then click
Schedule VM Compatibility Upgrade.

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Step 2: Read the next window to understand what a VM Compatibility


Upgrade will do. When ready, click Yes to continue.

Step 3: Choose the VM Compatibility version desired (example: ESXi


6.5 and later or ESXi 6.7 and later). You may also choose to only
upgrade after a normal OS shutdown versus when an OS crashes then
reboots.

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Step 4: Next we can review the status of the upgrade. When VM


Compatibility is scheduled to be upgraded, you will notice the status
of the upgrade is viewable under the VM Hardware section of the
virtual machine.

Step 5: Once a VM Compatibility upgrade has completed, it can be


verified by checking the status under the VM Hardware section of the
virtual machine.

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Conclusion
As you have witnessed updating VMware Tools or Virtual Machine
Compatibility are not complex tasks, but absolutely include steps that
will require consideration prior to execution. It is always best to
consult VMware Documentation pages for further details on VMware
Tools as well as Virtual Machine Compatibility prior to upgrading. Also
be sure to review the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

In the next vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will focus on upgrading


Upgrading VMFS Storage in a vSphere 6.7 environment. Please do not
hesitate to post questions in the comments section of this blog or
reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

In part 1 of the vSphere Upgrade Series, Preparing to Upgrade, we


covered getting started with our prerequisites, compatibility, and also
prepared the vSphere Update Manager (VUM) server to migrate its
data to the VCSA 6.7 during the upgrade. In part 2 we will cover the
vCenter Server Upgrade to 6.7. Let’s begin.

vCenter Server Upgrade


Now that VUM has passed its Migration Assistant pre-checks, we can
move to the vCenter Server Upgrade. I am also assuming here that you

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have a backup of the vCenter Server prior to upgrading.

We begin by mounting the VCSA installation ISO to an Admin


workstation that is on a routable network to the vCenter Server we will
be upgrading. Browse the ISO and open the “vcsa-ui-installer” folder
then the corresponding folder for your OS. I am running this from a
Windows system so I will open the “win32” folder.

Next run the application “installer.exe” with Administrator Rights. This


will launch the vCenter Server Appliance Installer to begin Stage 1.

NOTE: The upgrade of the vCenter Server is broken up into two stages, Stage 1 &
Stage 2. Stage 1 is the deployment of a new VCSA and Stage 2 is where all of the
configuration data and inventory are imported into the newly upgraded vCenter
Server.

Begin by clicking Upgrade.

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Stage 1
Step 1: This is the introduction and an explanation of the two Stages
of the Upgrade. Click Next to continue.

Step 2: Review the EULA, check the box to accept the terms of the
license agreement, and then click Next to continue.

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Step 3a: Enter the source vCenter Server that you will be Upgrading by
its FQDN or IP address. Click Connect To Source to reveal the
additional fields.

Step 3b: Complete each required field for SSO as well as the
information about the ESXi host that manages the source vCenter
Server. Then click Next to continue.

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Step 3c: You will prompted to verify the SSL Certificates. Review and
click Yes to continue.

Step 4a: Specify the target host or vCenter Server to which the new
VCSA will be deployed to. Click Next to continue.

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Step 4b: When prompted, review the SSL Certificate and thumbprints
then click Yes to continue.

Step 5: Specify the Virtual Machine name (this is only the Inventory
name) and set the password for the VCSA that will be deployed during
the upgrade. Click Next to continue.

NOTE: During an upgrade of the source VCSA, a new VCSA virtual machine is
deployed and configurations are imported to the new vCenter Server Appliance.
The source VCSA will be powered off and should be either removed from
inventory, or have its network adapter disabled after the upgrade completes.

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Step 6: Select the deployment size for the vCenter Server. If more
storage is needed than the default sizing, choose the “Storage Size”
dropdown for more choices. Storage size changes will be reflected in
the table below the selection dropdown in the Storage (GB) column.

It may be necessary to edit the storage size from Default to Large or X-


Large if importing the optional Historical & Performance Data (see
image for more details).

NOTE: If you plan to use vCenter High Availability (VCHA) after you upgrade your
vCenter Server, the smallest deployment size supported for VCHA is Small.

Click Next to continue.

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Step 7: Select the datastore location for the vCenter Server Appliance.
The option to also Enable Thin Disk Mode is available, if you require it.

Click Next to continue.

Step 8: Configure the temporary network settings that are required to


deploy the new VCSA. Be sure to add at least 1 DNS server. Once all
required fields are completed, click Next to continue.

Step 9: Review all settings of Stage 1 prior to Upgrade. Once verified,


click Finish to continue and kick off Stage 1 of the vCenter Server
Upgrade.

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Stage 1 of deploying the new vCenter Server Appliance is now


underway.

Once the VCSA is deployed and all RPM installs are completed in
Stage 1, you can click Continue to move on to Stage 2.

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Stage 2
Stage 2 of the upgrade is when the data from the source vCenter
Server as well as vSphere Update Manager (VUM) is imported into the
newly deployed VCSA.

Step 1: Review the details of the Stage 2 process and then Click Next
to continue.

This will kick off a series of pre-checks on the source vCenter Server.

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Step 2: Once pre-checks have completed, results will be shown on


screen. Review any warnings given, as well as the resolutions to these
warnings. In my upgrade scenario I had a few warnings, one reminding
me to change DRS which we did before we began, and others that I
validated were ok to proceed in this situation.

Review and click Close to continue.

Step 3: Select the data that you will require to be imported. The
Inventory & Configuration data is moved by default, any historical data
(events, tasks, performance, etc) is optional to import. This is offered
to shorten the upgrade and migration of data into the new VCSA.
Make the required choice, and then click Next to continue.

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Step 4: Join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program


or CEIP. Joining this program is optional but when you do join, it helps
VMware to improve our products and services, fix problems and
advise you on how best to deploy and use our products. CEIP is also
required to enable the vSAN health check services.

To understand this better, please review additional information


regarding the CEIP and its purpose.

Once a choice has been made, click Next to continue.

Step 5: Review all setting choices here and once complete, click Finish
to continue.

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The prompt here is a reminder that the source vCenter Server will be
powered down once all network configuration is enabled on the
destination VCSA.

Click OK to continue.

Stage 2 begins. Data is exported from the source vCenter Server and
prepared for import.

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Next, vCenter Server services are started on the destination VCSA.

Last, the copied data from the source vCenter Server is imported to
the destination VCSA.

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When all data has been imported to the destination VCSA, the process
is complete. Messages are presented at this step as informational,
such as a notice about TLS changes in vSphere 6.7.

Review these notices then click Close to continue.

Stage 2 of the vCenter Server Upgrade is now completed.

Click Close to continue.

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Closing the installer will launch the vCenter Server splash page
allowing you to login via the vSphere Client on HTML5.

Since the vSphere Web Client (Flex) is now deprecated, I will use the
HTML5 vSphere Client because it is now our default client and it
contains 95% of all workflows as compared to vSphere 6.5 Update 1
that contained 90% of workflows. The HTML5 vSphere Client will be
fully featured by the Fall of 2018.

Click the button “Launch vSphere Client (HTML5)” to continue.

Enter the administrator credentials (SSO administrator or other


administrator with access to vSphere) and login to view the vCenter

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Server and hosts.

Now we will verify the vCenter Server is now running on version 6.7.
We do this by clicking on the inventory name of the vCenter Server
and viewing the Version Information from the Summary tab.

Enable DRS
Since we disabled DRS during our preparing to upgrade post, it should
be enabled once again. We begin this task by highlighting the cluster
and then clicking on the Configure tab to view vSphere DRS settings.
If you had set DRS to Manual versus disabling, now is the time to

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change that also.

Next click Edit to continue.

In the Edit Cluster Settings window, click the slider switch to enable
vSphere DRS then click OK to save. DRS is now enabled on the cluster.

NOTE: You can also quickly perform these actions via PowerCLI with
the ‘Set-Cluster’ cmdlet.

Enable DRS:

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Set DRS automation level to Fully Automated:

Final Steps
After the vCenter Server Upgrade is completed, it is important to call
out that power off operations only happen automatically for the
vCenter Server, the VUM server must be powered off manually.

As a best practice, I suggest removing the Network Card from the old
vCenter Server as well as renaming the VM to differentiate it within
inventory and mitigate any accidental power on operations. Notice the
new VCSA (VCSA67) virtual machine inventory name that was given.
Note that renaming the VM does not change the FQDN of the VCSA,
this is just the inventory name of the VM.

Lastly, be sure to power off the VUM server since it is no longer


required to be running.

Rollback
Did your maintenance window close or maybe you encountered
another issue during an Upgrade? Not to worry, rollback is quite
simple. In this vSphere environment that we just upgraded we have no
external PSCs, only the vCenter Server Appliance to worry about. If we
did have an external PSC, we would first power off the newly deployed
PSC, restore the PSC instance from backup, and if it was joined to an

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Active Directory domain, re-join it to the domain.

In our case without an external PSC we would, power off the newly
deployed vCenter Server Appliance 6.7, bring the old vCenter Server
Appliance 6.0 instance online (If already powered off, simply power it
on. If not powered off, a restart is required), if it was joined to an
Active Directory domain, it may need to be joined again (if your
vCenter Server was Windows, be sure to have a local account on the
server and do not rely on any cached credentials). Lastly we wait for all
vCenter Server services to start and log in to the vSphere Web Client
to verify the vSphere inventory.

Please review KB2146453 for more guidance on rollbacks.

Conclusion
Remember; Focus, Plan, Execute!

We have successfully executed our vCenter Server Upgrade! We


started by reviewing our prerequisites & compatibility, gathering our
data, and then upgrading our vCenter Server and vSphere Update
Manager (VUM) from vSphere 6.0 Update3 to 6.7. Our VUM was
migrated to the 6.7 VCSA also during this upgrade scenario. In the
next vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will move to upgrading our
vSphere 6.0 ESXi hosts to vSphere 6.7 by utilizing vSphere Update
Manager to remediate.

Please do not hesitate to post questions in the comments section of


this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/vsphere-
upgrade-series-part-4-upgrading-vmware-tools-and-vm-
compatibility.html

Date: 2018-10-29

Write Something

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6. VMFS Upgrade
Topics related to upgrading VMFS version to 6

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6. 1 Blog: Automating Migration of VMFS-5 to VMFS-6 Datastores

Automating Migration of VMFS-5 to VMFS-6


Datastores
Next up in our Automating your vSphere Upgrade blog series is your
VMFS Datastore. vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 both support the latest
VMFS-6. Once all of your ESXi hosts that are connected to the VMFS-
5 datastore have been upgraded to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7 you
can then proceed to migrate your datastore to VMFS-6.

Please note that vSphere 6.7 no longer supports VMFS-3.


Prior to upgrading your ESXi host you should do an upgrade
from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 or they will be upgraded
automatically during the Host upgrade.

Migrating from VMFS-5 to VMFS-6


When we start our migration of our datastore’s to VMFS-6 you may be
wondering… Do I need to? What are the benefits? As we can see
below graphic there was quite a few enhancements in support for
Automatic Space Reclamation, In-Guest Space Reclamation and native
support for 4K native storage.

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You will also see that we have mentioned migrating from VMFS-5 to
VMFS-6. Due to the underlying storage changes to support 4K Native
storage as well as other features the metadata has changed and the
upgrade cannot be done In-Place. The migration requires you to
delete the current datastore and re-create. In a later section we will
cover how to automate this process.

You can find out more information on vSphere 6.7 Storage


enhancements here.

Checking Current VMFS Version

In case you are not sure what VMFS version your datastore is currently
running, we can find out with a simple PowerCLI one-liner.

Here we can see that DS01 is still at VMFS-5 and DS02 has already
been upgraded to VMFS-6. In the next section we will target
upgrading our datastore to VMFS-6.

When it comes to migrating to VMFS-6 we have a few methods. A


good reference to use is KB2147924, this KB covers the supported
methods and ways to update your VMFS version. My colleague Nigel
Hickey has covered how to do GUI based upgrades of VMFS. However,
when you have many datastore’s it may help to automate this process.

As we reference the above KB it mentions a PowerCLI cmdlet called


Update-VMFSDatastore. This is an powerful tool that acts a bit
different than your standard PowerCLI cmdlet, it is very verbose and
detailed with the checks that it does. However, there are also some
considerations to take into account when using it.

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A few considerations when using it are as follows:

Requires use of datastore cluster and have a temporary VMFS-5


datastore of equal or greater capacity.

Validates that no unsupported VMs exist on the datastore such as


those with SRM, VADP, VRM or Clustering.

Carefully review the usage of the Resume and Rollback


parameters in case of any errors.

So now that we know some things to look out for what does the
cmdlet actually do?

1.
2. Checks for VADP, SMPFT, MSCS/RAC virtual machines on Source
Datastore.
3.
4. Makes sure datastore is accessible to all hosts.
5.

Now that we understand how it works, lets jump into the usage.

1
2 Connect-VIServer ds-vcsa-03.cpbu.lab$Source = Get-Datastore
3 "DS02"$Temp = Get-Datastore "DS-TEMP"$Server = (Get-
4 VIServer -Server "ds-vcsa-03.cpbu.lab")Update-VmfsDatastore -
5 Datastore $Source -TemporaryDatastore $Temp -
6 TargetVmfsVersion "6" -Server $Server
7

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It requires very minimal input, we will put in the source datastore, the
temporary datastore, vCenter Server and the Target VMFS version.

The above animated gif will show the process. It is quite simple and if
you encounter errors they will be logged and you can rollback using
the rollback parameter of if the error can resumed you can use the
resume parameter.

Conclusion
It is always great to see some native tools to assist us in accomplishing
complicated tasks. For those who have an abundance of datastore’s in
their environment, this cmdlet can save quite a bit of time. If you have
used it, leave some feedback on your thoughts. Next up on our series
will be Automating Your Virtual Distributed Switch upgrade.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/10/automating-
migration-of-vmfs-5-to-vmfs-6-datastores.html

Date: 2018-10-29

Write Something

6. 2 Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 5: Upgrading VMFS Storage

vSphere Upgrade Series Part 5: Upgrading VMFS

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Storage
• vSphere 5.5 End of General Support Reminder •

If you are running vSphere 5.5, please be advised that End of General
Support (EOGS) for vSphere 5.5 occurred on September 19, 2018.
Read the 5.5 EOGS blog for more details.

Today brings us Part 5 of the vSphere Upgrade series which will cover
Upgrading VMFS Storage. Upgrading storage is key to take advantage
of the new features of VMFS as well as running a supported version of
the storage filesystem. With the introduction of vSphere 6.7,
filesystem version VMFS-3 is now deprecated and now supports just
two versions, VMFS-5 and VMFS-6. If you have been following this
blog series or not, you can recap what we have covered by starting
with the first blog “vSphere Upgrade Series Part 1: Preparing to
Upgrade“.

vSphere 6.5 brought us a new filesystem version VMFS-6. VMFS-6


contains many great new features such as support for new larger
capacity 4K disk drives, extended system resource files (*.sf files),
separate journal resource blocks, Automatic Space Reclamation, as
well as allowing multiple concurrent transactions at a time per host
which brings improved IOPS for multi-threaded workloads. The below
chart outlines some of the differences between VMFS-5 & VMFS-6.

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Here is something to consider for those that are on older versions of


the VMFS filesystem. ESXi uses different approaches for VMFS5 and
VMFS3 upgrades. Upgrading a VMFS5 version datastore to VMFS6 is
not how we remember it used to be when moving from VMFS3 to
VMFS5. Back in those older vSphere versions it was as simple as a
right click to upgrade the datastore. This is not the case for VMFS5
datastores. If you have a VMFS5 datastore in your environment, you
must create a new VMFS6 datastore and migrate virtual machines
from the older VMFS5 datastore to fresh VMFS6 datastore.

ESXi no longer supports VMFS3 datastores as of vSphere 6.5. An


upgraded ESXi host will automatically upgrade VMFS3 storage to
VMFS5 when mounting any existing datastores. Consider that at the
first boot after the vSphere Host upgrade to 6.7, all discovered VMFS3
datastores get upgraded to VMFS5. This also applies if you manually
mount a VMFS3 datastore after the boot.

The following considerations apply to VMFS3 datastores:

If you use an ESXi .iso image to upgrade your legacy host through
vSphere Update Manager, and the upgrade is not successful, the
VMFS3 datastore is upgraded to VMFS5 if the installation process
passes the mount phase.

In the mixed environment of the 6.5 and 6.7 ESXi hosts, the
VMFS3 datastore upgrades when the 6.7 host attempts to mount
it. The 6.5 host can continue to access the datastore even when
the upgrade is unsuccessful.

When you mount the VMFS3 datastore after its resignaturing, it


does not upgrade to VMFS5. You must perform the upgrade
manually.

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Upgrading VMFS Storage


When upgrading VMFS versions, there are a few options to choose
from such as making the changes via the GUI or via CLI. In this
example I will be using the GUI method to upgrade VMFS.

NOTE: David Stamen of our vSphere Technical Marketing team is


working on an upgrade automation blog series that will cover the CLI
methods for upgrading VMFS as well as vCenter Server, ESXi hosts,
Networking, etc.

There is not too much behind this process because essentially what we
are doing is creating a new VMFS6 datastore and then migrating any
VMs off of the VMFS5 storage. Next would be moving those
workloads to the newly created VMFS6 datastore. I will step through
the process of creating the new datastore & removing the old one.

Step 1: Verify the current datastore type by moving the the Datastore
view, then selecting a datastore to review. We can see that this is a
VMFS5 type datastore. At this point you should evacuate any VMs
from the datastore to another location before the new VMFS6
datastore is created.

Step 2: Next we will begin the creation of the VMFS6 datastore. From
the Actions menu navigate to Storage and then New Datastore…

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Step 3: The New Datastore wizard comes up for you to choose a


datastore type. Choose VMFS and click Next.

Step 4: Fill out the name of the new datastore and select the disk/LUN
to use also. Click Next to continue.

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Step 5: Choose VMFS6 for the version and click Next to continue.

Step 6: Review the partition configuration for the disk layout and
make any necessary changes if required. Once edits are complete,
click Next.

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Step 7: The last step here in the wizard is to review the settings that
you have selected and click Finish to create the datastore.

Step 8: Review the new Datastore type and confirm it is VMFS6.

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NOTE: If you have any VMs to move to the new VMFS6 datastore, now
is the time to migrate them over before deleting the older VMFS5
datastore.

Step 9: The final steps will be to delete the old VMFS5 datastore.
Begin by selecting the datastore, from the Actions menu choose
Delete Datastore.

Step 10: Confirm the deletion of the VMFS5 datastore and when
ready, click Yes to continue with the removal operation.

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Step 11: As a visual confirmation we review that the VMFS5 datastore


has been deleted.

Conclusion
After these steps you now have a new VMFS6 datastore and have
removed the older version VMFS5 storage. To learn more or review
other features of VMFS, please review the VMware KB 2147824 and
also VMware Documentation for VMFS.

In the next and final vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will focus on
upgrading Upgrading vSphere Networking in a vSphere 6.7

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environment. Please do not hesitate to post questions in the


comments section of this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter
@vCenterNerd.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/vsphere-
upgrade-series-part-5-upgrading-vmfs-storage.html

Date: 2018-10-29

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7. Virtual Distributed Switch Upgrade


Topics related to upgrading Virtual Distributed Switch

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7. 1 Blog: Automating the Upgrade of the Virtual Distributed Switch

Automating the Upgrade of the Virtual Distributed


Switch
We are on the home stretch of our Automating your vSphere Upgrade
blog series. The final step of completing our upgrade will be upgrading
our Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS). When upgrading your VDS on
vSphere 6.7 the version is actually 6.6 (we will cover the details later).
Please make sure prior to upgrading your VDS to 6.6 all ESXi hosts
have been upgraded to ESXi 6.7, if you still have hosts on ESXi 6.5 you
will only be able to upgrade to version 6.5.

Considerations for Upgrading your Virtual


Distributed Switch
The first consideration we would like to think about is why would I
want to upgrade my VDS? Well if you had previously upgraded from
vSphere 5.5 your VDS still may be on version 5.5 and this is not
compatible with vSphere 6.7. Another reason is that we can review the
new features that are listed below, we can see this when we click on
the (i) within the VDS GUI. We can see that upgrading to version 6.0
gets us NIOC v3 and IGMP/MLD snooping, version 6.5 gives us port

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mirroring enhancements and version 6.6 gets us mac learning. If you


run any nested virtualization in your environment this is a great
enhancement as we no longer require you to enable promiscuous
mode on your VM port group.

Another consideration I like to recommend is that you keep your VDS


upgraded to the same version as your ESXi hosts whenever possible.
Previously in most vSphere versions it has always been said that
upgrading your VDS can be done at anytime and is a non-disruptive
upgrade., but we always want to use caution and do this within a
maintenance window. The VDS upgrade is also something that has no
rollback, once it is complete it is permanent unless you have
completed a backup.

With vSphere 6.7 and the introduction of VDS version 6.6 there are
some known issues and considerations I want to mention prior to
getting started upgrading our switch. A question I get asked quite
frequently is why is vSphere 6.7’s VDS version 6.6? The answer is quite
simple, VMware on AWS (VMC) shares quite a bit of the same code as
vSphere On-Perm and since there were no major changes to the VDS
features or functionality the version stayed the same. Prior to
upgrading our VDS version to 6.6 we definitely want to make sure we
review KB52621. This KB covers considerations around known issues
upgrading to version 6.6. Some of these considerations are making
sure to put DRS into partially automated mode since if a vMotion

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occurs during the upgrade the VDS upgrade will fail. To take these
considerations into account, we will make sure to include this in our
Upgrading your Virtual Distributed Switch automation.

Prior to upgrading we also need to verify that all hosts have been
upgraded to vSphere 6.7 so we do not have any errors. If there is a
incompatible host attached the upgrade will not be allowed to
proceed.

To validate our ESXi host version for all hosts attached to our VDS we
can do so as follows.

We can see here that one of our hosts is not upgraded to 6.7 so if we
were to proceed with upgrading our VDS it would fail. Before we
proceed on to our next section we will make sure to upgrade our ESXi
host to vSphere 6.7. If we were to attempt to upgrade our VDS prior to
upgrading we would have encountered an error such as below.

Upgrading your Virtual Distributed Switch

Now that we are ready to move forward with upgrading our VDS, we
will take some of the above considerations into place. Since we know if
a vMotion is occurring during upgrade it will fail. We will make sure
that if DRS is enabled we will put it into Partially Automated mode.
Also, since we know we cannot rollback from a version upgrade we will
make sure to take a backup prior to our upgrade. Unlike our previous
blogs where we used simple one-liners, we will utilize a bit more logic
in this upgrade that will be required as a script.

As an introduction to the below script we will outline what it does. At


the top we define variables for the VDS Name, Version we wish to
upgrade to and the cluster(s) in which the VDS is attached. We will
then check if DRS is enabled on the vSphere Cluster. If DRS is enabled
we will store the current DRS Automation level and set it to Partially
Automated, Backup the VDS, Upgrade the VDS and then we will
restore the DRS Level back to the original state. If DRS is disabled, we

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perform a Backup of the VDS and then Upgrade the VDS.

You can see the code below and grab the script from GitHub.

1
2
3
4
Connect-VIServer "ds-vcsa-03.cpbu.lab" | Out-Null$VDSwitch =
5
"VDS"$VDVersion = "6.6.0"$Cluster = Get-Cluster "Cluster"If
6
($Cluster.DrsEnabled -like "True") {Write-Host "DRS is Enabled,
7
it will be temporarily disabled during upgrade." -
8
ForegroundColor "Green"$ClusterDRSLevel =
9
$Cluster.DrsAutomationLevelWrite-Host "DRS Cluster is
1
currently set to $ClusterDRSLevel. Will change back when
0
complete." -ForegroundColor "Green"Get-Cluster $Cluster | Set-
1
Cluster -DrsAutomationLevel "PartiallyAutomated" -
1
Confirm:$falseGet-VDSwitch -Name $VDSwitch | Export-
1
VDSwitch -Description "My Backup" -Destination
2
"/PathToBackup/VDSBackup-$VDswitch-$((Get-
1
Date).ToString(‘yyyy-MM-dd-hh-mm’)).zip"Get-VDSwitch -Name
3
$VDSwitch | Set-VDSwitch -Version $VDVersionWrite-Host
1
"Upgrade is complete. Setting Cluster to $ClusterDRSLevel." -
4
ForegroundColor "Green"Get-Cluster $Cluster | Set-Cluster -
1
DrsAutomationLevel $ClusterDRSLevel -Confirm:$false}ElseIf
5
($Cluster.DrsEnabled -like "False") {Write-Host "DRS is Disabled,
1
No additional action needed." -ForegroundColor "Green"Get-
6
VDSwitch -Name $VDSwitch | Export-VDSwitch -Description
1
"My Backup" -Destination "/PathToBackup/VDSBackup-
7
$VDswitch-$((Get-Date).ToString(‘yyyy-MM-dd-hh-
1
mm’)).zip"Get-VDSwitch -Name $VDSwitch | Set-VDSwitch -
8
Version $VDVersion}
1
9
2
0

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As we can see the upgrade is now complete. Even though the upgrade
is itself a simple one-liner (Get-VDSwitch -Name $VDSwitch | Set-
VDSwitch -Version $VDVersion), we can automate the pre-requisites,
backups and considerations to make this a more seamless upgrade. If
you are interested in understanding how you can upgrade your VDS
through the UI please see my colleague Nigel Hickeys blog here.

You can find more information on Backing Up and Restoring your VDS
here and more information on Upgrading your Virtual Distributed
Switch here.

Conclusion
As we have now completed Automating our vSphere Upgrade we can
see it wasn’t so bad after all. Im hoping this series has helped you
better understand what it takes to Automate your vSphere Upgrade
and for those of you with large environments it gives you an idea on
how you can start to streamline the upgrades across your entire
vSphere environment.

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/10/automating-
upgrade-of-virtual-distributed-switch.html

Date: 2018-10-29

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Title

7. 2 Blog: vSphere Upgrade Series Part 6: Upgrading vSphere


Networking

vSphere Upgrade Series Part 6: Upgrading vSphere


Networking
Congratulations! You have made it to the final part of the vSphere
Upgrade Series, Part 6: Upgrading vSphere Networking. To recap, I
kicked off this series by reviewing our Upgrade prerequisites &
compatibility, gathering our data, and Preparing to Upgrade. Next we
continued by upgrading vCenter Server and migrating vSphere
Update Manager (VUM) from vSphere 6.0 Update3 to 6.7. Continuing
on from there we walked through preparing VUM with an Upgrade
Baseline to remediate the vSphere ESXi hosts to vSphere 6.7. After the
hosts were upgraded to vSphere 6.7 we moved on to upgrading
VMware Tools and VM Compatibility followed by upgrading VMFS
datastores.

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Virtual networking comes in as Step 6 in the overall vSphere Upgrade


process. Because vSphere 6.7 is not compatible with vSphere 5.5
components, one requirement is making sure that the vSphere
Distributed Switch (VDS) has been upgraded to at least a 6.x version
during your upgrade journey. What I mean here is that since there is
no upgrade path from 5.5 to 6.7 directly, the upgrade from 5.5 will
bring you to 6.x before moving to 6.7. After getting up to vSphere 6.x
and before upgrading to vSphere 6.7, you must update the VDS to a
6.x version. If this is not completed prior to upgrading your upgrade
may fail.

When creating or updating a vSphere distributed switch in vSphere 6.7


you have 3 options or versions to move to.

1.
2. vSphere 6.0
3.
4. vSphere 6.5
5.
6. vSphere 6.6
7.

Most updates to networking have been within ESXi itself, but some
features require upgrading VDS as outlined above. When upgrading to
VDS version 6.0 or 6.5 it’s quite simple and can be done with no
disruption. However, when upgrading to VDS version 6.6 there are
some considerations to take, KB52621 has considerations to review to
prevent most issues.

Upgrading vSphere Networking


In my lab I will be upgrading a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) from
version 6.0 to 6.6.

Step 1: First we will review what version the current VDS is running by
viewing the Summary tab on the Networking screen. Once reviewed
we will move to upgrading.

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Step 2: Here we click on the Upgrades Available link and can see an
upgrade is needed.

Step 3: Click on the Actions menu then browse to Upgrade, and


choose Upgrade Distributed Switch

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Step 4: On the upgrade wizard, review the version choices by click on


the “i” for more info. From here you can see the benefits that come
with each VDS version. Once a selection is made, click Next to
continue.

Step 5: Once the switch upgrade completes, you can see the new
version shown on the Summary tab of the Networking screen. The
VDS upgrade is now finished.

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Conclusion
Thats a wrap! From beginning to end of a vSphere Upgrade,
component to component, screen by screen. I hope that this series has
helped take some of the unknowns or complexity away from your
vSphere Upgrade Journey. My job is to educate as well as help make
things easier to understand and digest. If these blogs have helped in
anyway, please leave a comment.

For review, please follow the below links to each part of the vSphere
Upgrade Series:

Please do not hesitate to post questions in the comments section of


this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

Remember to always, Focus, Plan, and Execute!

Article: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/09/vsphere-
upgrade-series-part-6-upgrading-vsphere-networking.html

Date: 2018-10-29

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8. Post-Upgrade Considerations

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8. 1 vCenter High Availability

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8. 2 File-Based Backup and Restore

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None

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8. 3 Blog: vCenter Server Converge Tool

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click to see the


content

8. 4 Walkthrough: Converging an External vCenter Deployment

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8. 5 Walkthrough: Converging a Load Balanced External vCenter


Deployment

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