Here's the guide on how you can upgrade your vRA 7.x environment using vRSLCM 2.x
For this example, I am performing an upgrade from version 7.5 HF16 to 7.6 GA
I have a simple environment
wpacvra.prem.com being my vRealize Automation appliance
wpaciaas.prem.com being my Infrastructure as a Service node
IaaS database is installed on the same node where IaaS services are installed
Before we start to upgrade we have to take a snapshot on all the components. This is a MANDATORY step
Enter Snapshot Prefix and ensure do not check snapshot with memory box. We should not take snapshots on vRA components with memory
Once the snapshots are completed, let's create a request to upgrade
Click on the three dots on the right side of the environment and then click on upgrade
You will be redirected to this below pane.
Ensure we click on the checkbox for IaaS Snapshot. So that if IaaS upgrade fails so whatsoever reason, you can revert to Post-VA upgrade state and then retry upgrade again
In this example, as shown below I would be using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager Repository which contains upgrade binaries
Once done, when we click NEXT, we are now into Precheck phase
Here we need to click on RUN-PRECHECK so that the request for validation is submitted successfully
The first phase of precheck would be your data validation
The second phase of precheck would be vRealize Automation validations
During this phase, if there are any exceptions it would let you know as shown in the screenshot below
The exception thrown above indicates that there is a reboot pending on my IAAS node.
So let's reboot IAAS node and then rerun precheck
As you can see below after we performed a reboot on our IAAS node the PreCheck phase did complete successfully
I have attached PRECHECK report from my environment here for reference
Since PRECHECK has now been successfully completed, click on NEXT to move on to review SUMMARY of the request.
On the top right corner of this page, you have an option to run precheck on submit. This is optional. If you would like to run it again that's absolutely fine. It would just take a few more minutes extra.
Once we click on SUBMIT, request of upgrading vRealize Automation is created
If we have selected to run pre-check on submit, then there would be 4 steps, else 3 steps for a successful upgrade in a simple environment
Step 2/4 performs vRA appliance upgrade
This has various phases
upgradevrava
upgradevrava-com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.plugin.core.vra70.task.StartGenericVraTask
FROM STATE
com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.plugin.core.vra70.task.StartGenericVraTask
TO STATE
com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.core.vra70.task.upgrade.VraUpgradeTask
upgradevrava-com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.core.vra70.task.upgrade.VraUpgradeTask
This is the phase where your appliance is being upgraded.
There are three phases in a vRA appliance upgrade
Pre Update
Upgrade
Post Update
Here's the list of logs you need to monitor during the pre-update phase
/opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log
/var/log/bootstrap/preupdate.log
The below screenshot shows that the preupdate phase has been successful.
Now at this phase, we only have to monitor /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log
This is where the upgrade phase logs are being logged.
Following message is seen once the install phase is complete and post-install or postupdate starts
20/05/2020 10:32:26 [INFO] Update status: Done package installation20/05/2020 10:32:26 [INFO] Update status: Running post-install scripts
Here's a small snippet from postupdate.log
Remember this upgrade VA task will be at 67% for a while till the upgrade is complete on the virtual appliance ( might change for a distributed environment )
Below screenshot indicate that the post update is now complete
And the final phase of upgrade begins
After a few seconds, the whole appliance upgrade is now complete
upgradevrava-com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.platform.automata.service.task.FinalTask
is now complete as shown below
As we selected to take a snapshot after VA upgrade is complete, it would initialize a snapshot task now
Here's the task completing on vCenter for IAAS node
After snapshot task is complete which finished your Step#3 we now move on to IAAS upgrade phase
This is where IAAS upgrade starts
As the first step during this phase it would initiate a reboot on the virtual appliance
Once the reboot task is complete as shown above, the new 7.6 VAMI would be available
One thing to note during this phase we can monitor progress from
/opt/vmware/var/log/vami/upgrade-iaas.log
Unless all VA services are started it would not move ahead with IAAS components upgrade
Here's the snippet which states that all services have been started
[UTC: 2020-05-20 10:49:34.204100; Local: 2020-05-20 10:49:34.204108] [INFO]: Starting automatic IaaS upgrade.[UTC: 2020-05-20 10:49:34.204426; Local: 2020-05-20 10:49:34.204430] [INFO]: IaaS upgrade is pending: Waiting for VA services to start...[UTC: 2020-05-20 11:06:09.930810; Local: 2020-05-20 11:06:09.930820] [INFO]: All VA services have started.
IAAS server components would now be identified and then upgrade would be initiated
As stated above upgrade-iaas.log is one and the other one would be inside the IAAS node itself
<<DRIVE>>\Program Files (x86) \VMware\vCAC\ManagementAgent\Logs\CommandOutputStarts upgrading server components
Once done, it goes ahead with DEM's and completes them
Then comes Agents and few final tasks which complete your IAAS upgrade as well
Now going back to vRSLCM UI, we can see that the final tasks are complete as well drawing curtains to the automated upgrade from 7.5 to 7.6
The whole request is now marked as completed
Going back to the environment, we will now see the version to be 7.6
We can even check the same from VAMI
Now let's deep-dive into various phases from logs perspective, this would help in troubleshooting
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