From the VCF Operations console go to Fleet Management >> Lifecycle >> VCF Management and a banner appeared informing you of an upgrade. Click ‘Learn More’
You will see there are no updates available and another symptom I ran into is when trying to download any VCF Operations 9.0.1.0 binaries, I receive the following error
In my previous blog I wrote up the process of importing a vCenter instance while on version 8.x. My next venture is getting it upgraded to VCF 9, this would be vCenter, ESX & NSX.
Now that the domain is part of my VCF Fleet, from the VCF Operations console, go to Fleet Management >> Lifecycle >>
You can see the there is a different icon for the Workload Domain GENAPP
To the right side there is a Configuration Update available.
Upon completion, checked the vCenter and it created a new DVPG, tagged with the correct VLAN and then made the pg Ephemeral
We can move to Plan Upgrade or Plan Patching located under ‘Available Updates’, let’s see what Plan looks like
There is our build out, which we can also customize.
Finally, summary of steps being performed
The next step is Configuring and Scheduling the Upgrade.
In a previous blog I covered importing a vCenter instance with a single cluster see here. and if you go to Part 1 of the blog, I covered performing a configuration update needed for the newly imported Workload domain.
The next step is to go back into Lifecycle for the Workload Domain and Configure Update
The wizard for the NSX Precheck will begin, click Next. In my homelab, I have no Edge clusters configured so clicked Next and straight to Run Precheck.
Once the Precheck completes, we can then move forward with performing a Schedule Update and that will give you an option to perform right away or schedule at a later time.
Once the update has kicked off, you can click ‘View Status’ and collapse to view all the components
Hey! Look at that, Step 1 is complete..onto Step 2. Click ‘Configure Update’
This next step will be upgrading a vCenter Server appliance from 8.0 u3 to 9.0. Because this is a single vCenter, we can leverage the Reduced Downtime Feature, but in this case, we will go straight into it.
Confirm Backup
Provide a temporary IP address for the new vCenter (No DNS record required, however optional if you want to reserve for future use.
Schedule the update and switchover options, we’re going for Immediate. The final step is reviewing everything and then proceed.
Now that vCenter has been upgraded to 9.0.1, next step is ESX hosts to 9.0.1
You might need to disable DRS VM/Host affinity rules placed when NSX was deployed on the cluster. Re-enable after completion.
Before we ‘Configure Update’ we have to jump into vCenter and create an Image.
Go to the Stack Menu >> Lifecycle Manager >> Image Library and click ‘Create Image’
Provide a unique image name and select the targeted ESXi version. Your environment will vary. Click Validate & Save.
Now it’s saved, we can go into VCF Operations and Import the Image.
Under Fleet Management >> Lifecycle >> click to highlight org name
Import from a vCenter and select the image created earlier, click Import. **This will take some time to finish as a task for the import will be running.**
This task did error out for me because I had an image already with that ESXi build, so resorting to using existing one.
Under Fleet Management >> Lifecycle >> Select the Workload Domain and click ‘Configure Update’
Click ‘Next’ at the Cluster Precheck screen, then select the cluster to be updated
Select the cluster and click ‘Assign Image’
Select Image and click ‘Assign Image’
I un-checked all Upgrade Options and click Next, and then ‘Run Precheck’
The Precheck completed, I have some warnings being this is consumer hardware, Exit Details and then we proceed with schedule.
Click ‘Schedule Update’ run through the prompts of verifying the upgrade and scheduled for ‘Upgrade Now’.
We’re off to the races..
Everything completed successfully, there is our versions. Came a long way from 8.x 🙂
Here is some information for my 8.x vCenter to be Imported
vCenter 8.0 U3g
3 host cluster with DRS enabled
ESX hosts running 8.0 U3e
VDS with 2 uplinks attached from all hosts
NFS v3 backed datastore for principal storage (Synology)
vCenter appliance VM resides in the vCenter being imported
Cluster is using baselines for lifecycle (did this on purpose)
4 DNS records & 3 IPs reserved an NSX 3 node cluster.
Since the vCenter is NOT connected to any NSX instance, a new NSX instance will be created.
The term ‘Import’ is used when the action is performed within VCF Operations. ‘Converge’ is used when using the VCF Installer.
The actions are performed within the VCF Operations 9 console.
From the VCF Operations home page go to Inventory >> select the Organization listed under VCF Instances and you will see a drop-down menu for ‘ADD A WORKLOAD DOMAIN’ select ‘Import a vCenter’
Input a unique name for the Workload Domain
Selecting ‘Specify an external vCenter‘ and un-check the vCenter connected to an NSX instance. Fill out authentication details of the vCenter
Confirm thumbprint and Acknowledge
Once you click Next, Prechecks will kick off
I did have some ‘Warnings’ relating to upgrade policy settings, it allows for me to resume. This might be something to revisit when SDDC Manager take on lifecycle.
Because a vCenter 8.x environment is being imported, NSX 4.x will require 3 managers.
For the Networking section, populate fields for an NSX Management Cluster. This will also use the same management network the vCenter is on.
I will keep the default NSX Overlay options and define my own passwords
At Validation I got hit with some additional errors. For the particular NSX version, binaries needed to be downloaded.
Just directed myself to Fleet Management and started the download **Notice you have to select VCF 5.2 from the version drop-down. Also had to look inside the Patch Binaries for the particular version.
Final Validation succeeded
Review
Once it kicked off, the rest can be monitored in Tasks under Fleet Management and when complete, you will have a Workload Domain added to your organization.
