In this part of the article we are now ready to progress with the VCSA upgrade stage 2. In particular during this phase the VCSA CLI installer will:
- connect to the source VCSA
- collect the necessary data
- shutdown the source appliance
- configure the new appliance with existing parameters
- import the data into the new appliance
It might sound as a lot of work but in reality the VCSA installer will take of everything. Depending on data stored into the source appliance it might take a long time. In this instance the VCSA upgrade stage 2 took longer than the previous stage. All in all the entire process took about 40 mins for both stages. Not too bad in the end. One expedient that could help with speed is to take a backup of the source appliance before running the upgrade process. This is not only a best practice but also helps reducing data to be collected by the new appliance. Also using a Syslog server helps too!
VMware VCSA upgrade stage 2
The VCSA upgrade stage 2 is now ready to procced with the next steps. At this point the configuration can happen either from the wizard or simply pointing to the new IP Address on port “5480” for the appliance with a web browser.
Before proceeding the VCSA upgrade stage 2 will verify that features and configurations like the VMware DRS are not active on the vSphere Host where we intend to install the new appliance. At least for the duration of the VCSA upgrade process.
Another warning is about VMware Update Manager (VUM) definitions will not be copied over the new appliance. Not a big deal and it’s always a good idea to download the latest ones from VMware. This is an automatic process.
From the wizard we can select which data should be collected and imported from the source appliance. In this example I will select to import everything. To reduce the size of S.E.A.T. (Statistics, Events, Alerts, Tasks) it is possible to configure an external Syslog server.
Let’s accept the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program if desired.
The wizard has now all the information to proceed with VCSA upgrade stage 2.
The source VCSA at this point will be shutdown automatically. Its name and IP address settings will be used by the new VCSA.
All data from source appliance has been copied before the shutdown. It’s now time to setup the appliance with the required settings. The wizard will take care of this part.
Another message is informing us about the TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will be automatically disabled as deprecated. SSL is the new standard.
At this point the wizard is ready to import the copied data from the source appliance. Services will be restarted and the new appliance is ready to use. This time we can browse the previous IP Address for the appliance on port 443.
We’re greeted with two clients. The vSphere Client based on HTML5 and the Web Client based on Flash. VMware 6.7 will be the last release supporting both. The very large majority of features and operations are available in the new HTML5 Client based on the Clarity theme.
As expected we can now use the HTML5 vSphere client to operate our data center!
If we take a look at the Management web interface for the VMware VCSA 6.7 appliance we notice this one has been updated using the same Clarity theme.
Next step is to upgrade the Intel NUC running on vSphere 6.5u1 to the latest 6.7 release.
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