Upgrading vRealize Automation from 7.3 to 7.6 version.

 Hello !!

Today, I am writing this post for the upgrade of vRealize Automation platform from 7.3 to 7.6 version.

Let me give you a look at my current vRA infrastructure components.

We have vRA 7.3 platform in distributed deployment  mode which have following components/Nodes.

3 X vRA Appliances.

2 X IAAS Web server.

2 X IAAS Manager server 

2 X DEM server for ABC vCenter server Endpoint

2X DEM server for DEF vCenter server Endpoint

2X DEM server for XYZ vCenter server Endpoint

2 X SQL 2016 server

All the IAAS/Manager/DEM/SQL servers are running on Windows 2012 R2 STD edition.

First of all, we need to prepare for some pre-requisites for the upgrade. I have upgraded my 2 vRA distributed platform and basis on that experience, i can say it is quite difficult and you can face many issues during the upgrade.

The Reason of issues is that the mixture of appliances and Windows servers on this vRealize product.

So, let's don't worry about the result, we should prepare our self properly and we can achieve our goal.

Below are things, we need to prepare for that before upgrade.

1. Please ensure that you have taken backups of all vRA and IAAS/Manager/DEM servers.

2. Check and reset the "root" password on all vRA appliances if expired.

3. Disable load balancers for all components if any.

4. Unregister vRealize Business from vRA if you have vRB in your environment.

5. Plz make ensure that no user is able to raise any VM request during the activity.

6. Make a backup of below directories on all vRA appliances.

•  /ect/vcac/
•  /etc/vco/
•  /etc/apache2/
• /etc/rabbitmq/

7. These nodes must have at least 5 GB of free disk space: 

• Primary IaaS Website 
• Microsoft SQL database 
• Model Manager  

8. on vRA appliance nodes, below free space should be available.

• At least 15 GB on the root partition
• 5 GB on the /storage/db partition for the master vRealize Automation appliance 
• 15 GB on the root partition for each replica virtual appliance 

9. Complete these steps if you are upgrading a distributed environment configured with an embedded PostgreSQL database.

•   Examine the files in the pgdata directory on the master host before you upgrade the replica hosts. 
•  Navigate to the PostgreSQL data folder on the master host at /var/vmware/vpostgres/current/pgdata/. 
• Close and remove any .swp files in the pgdata directory. Files with a .swp suffix require you to   close the VI session and delete the file. 
• Verify that all files in this directory have the correct owner name: postgres:<owner-group>

10. In Distributed vRA environment, we need to set the PostgreSQL replication mode to Asynchronous.

11. If you have antivirus solution on IAAS/Manager/DEM servers, plz disable the antivirus or remove if possible.

12. At this point, take a snapshot on all IAAS/Manager/DEM servers.

13. On all IAAS/Manager/DEM/SQL servers, we need to install the JAVA SE Runtime Environment 8, 64 bits, update 181 or later. After you install Java, you must set the environment variable, JAVA_HOME, to the new version on each server node.

14. At this point, take a snapshot on all vRA appliances nodes.

15. At this point, we need to clean up postgres database.

• ·        Make sure taking a snapshot of the master virtual appliance.
• ·        From the vRA VAMI, switch replication from sync to async if not done             previously.
• ·        Run below commands to vacuum the database and remove lob entries.
• ·        su - postgres -c "/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/vacuumlo -v -p 5432       vcac"
• ·        su - postgres -c "/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/vacuumdb -f -p 5432        -t pg_largeobject -t pg_largeobject_metadata vcac"
• ·        To reclaim database space, use the vacuum full commands.
• ·        ./psql -U postgres -d vcac
• ·        vacuum full
• ·        vacuum analyze

16. Download the vRealize update repo iso file from VMware portal (VMware-vR-Appliance-7.6.0.317-13027280-updaterepo.iso).

17. At this point, we need to restart the all vRA and Windows nodes because some time if any reboot pending on any servers due to patches or other reason it will fail the upgrade activity.

18. Once all the vRA and Windows nodes came back after reboot and all vRA services registered on VAMI page. we also make sure that all nodes are connected well with each other. you can check this on VAMI page under Cluster tab and Last connected time should be less than 30 seconds for IAAS nodes and 10 mins for vRA nodes.

Alright, this is our pre-requisites and readiness checks before the upgrade starts.

Now, open the master vRA appliance Console and attached the downloaded ISO file via CDROM.

Next, login to the VAMI page, go to "update" tab and click on "Settings" tab under it.

Choose "Use CDROM updates" option and Save settings.

Next, click on "Status" tab and then click on "Check Updates". It will check updates from attached ISO file in CDROM and then gives option for "Install Updates".

Next, click on "Install Updates" and upgrade task will start now.

To Monitor the update progress, you can ssh vRA master nodes and run below commands to see the progress.

# tail -f /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log

# tail -f /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/vami.log

When the vRA appliance update finishes, we hav to reboot the master appliance from VAMI.

In distributed environment, all successful upgraded replica vRA appliances nodes reboot when we reboot the master vRA appliance.

After the vRA appliances reboot, please wait for vRA nodes comes back and all VA services to start and registered as well.

Go to Update tab, Now you will see IAAS nodes updates will start and it will take 30-40 mins time.

Once IAAS updates finish, you can check the status under "Cluster" tab and here it will show that all vRA as well IAAS nodes upgraded to 7.6 version.

                                Post Upgrade tasks

1. Enable all load balancers and check LBs health.

2. Set the PostgreSQL database replication mode to Synchronous.

3. Check the VMs deployment from vRA portal.

4. Register back vRealize business with vRA.

5. Remove all snapshots from vRA appliances as well as IAAS nodes.

That's all.. Cheers !!!