This post is part of the series to get vCloud Director for service providers upgraded to latest version from version 9.1 to version 10.
As part of this series we are posting about all tasks related on this work to mention a few quickly.
- Upgrading PostgreSQL to version 10
- Updating vCloud Director
- Converting DB to PostgreSQL
- Migrating vCloud Director from a linux deployment into virtual appliance
- Configurations and troubleshooting that may come along the way
Browse our Blog for details on above.
Now let’s get into Upgrading vCloud Director to version 9.7
You can upgrade a single cell by running the vCloud Director installer without command options. Before you restart an upgraded cell, you must upgrade the database schema. You upgrade the database schema after upgrading at least one cell in the server group.
You can use the vCloud Director installer for Linux to upgrade a vCloud Director server group that consists of vCloud Director installations on a supported Linux OS. If your vCloud Director server group consists of vCloud Director 9.5 appliances deployments, you use the vCloud Director installer for Linux to upgrade your existing environment only as part of the migration workflow. See Migrating to vCloud Director Appliance.
For a multi-cell vCloud Director installation, instead of manually upgrading each cell and the database in a sequence, you can Perform an Orchestrated Upgrade of a vCloud Director Installation.
Prerequisites
- Verify that your vCloud Director database, the vSphere components, and the NSX components are compatible with the new version of vCloud Director.
- Verify that you have superuser credentials for the servers in your vCloud Director server group.
- If you want the installer to verify the digital signature of the installation file, download and install the VMware public key on the target server. If you already verified the digital signature of the installation file, you do not need to verify it again during installation. See Download and Install the VMware Public Key.
- Verify that you have a valid license key to use the version of the vCloud Director software to which you are upgrading.
- Verify that you all ESXi hosts are enabled. Starting with vCloud Director 9.5, disabled ESXi hosts are unsupported.
Procedure
Upgrade procedure involves 2 steps
- Upgrade a vCloud Director Cell
- The vCloud Director installer verifies that the target server meets all upgrade prerequisites and upgrades the vCloud Director software on the server. [Read more]
- Upgrade the vCloud Director Database
- From an upgraded vCloud Director server, you run a tool that upgrades the vCloud Director database. You must not restart any upgraded vCloud Director server before upgrading the shared database. [Read more]
Upgrade a vCloud Director Cell
The vCloud Director installer verifies that the target server meets all upgrade prerequisites and upgrades the vCloud Director software on the server.
vCloud Director for Linux is distributed as a digitally signed executable file with a name of the form vmware-vcloud-director-distribution-v.v.v-nnnnnn.bin, where v.v.v represents the product version and nnnnnn the build number. For example: vmware-vcloud-director-distribution-9.7.0-14535248.bin. Running this executable installs or upgrades vCloud Director.
For a multi-cell vCloud Director installation, you must run the vCloud Director installer on each member of the vCloud Director server group.
Procedure
- Log in to the target server as root.
- Download the installation file to the target server.
In this case the installer filename to upload into our Linux server isvmware-vcloud-director-distribution-9.7.0-14535248.bin - Verify that the checksum of the download matches the checksum posted on the download page.Values for MD5 and SHA1 checksums are posted on the download page. Use the appropriate tool to verify that the checksum of the downloaded installation file matches the checksum shown on the download page. A Linux command of the following form displays the checksum for installation-file.
# md5sum vmware-vcloud-director-distribution-9.7.0-14535248.bin
The command returns the installation file checksum that must match the MD5 checksum from the download page. - Change the installation file to executable mode
The installation file requires execute permission. To be sure that it has this permission, open a console, shell, or terminal window and run the following Linux command, where installation-file is the full pathname to the vCloud Director installation file.# chmod u+x vmware-vcloud-director-distribution-9.7.0-14535248.bin - Run the installation file
To run the installation file, enter the full pathname, for example:# ./vmware-vcloud-director-distribution-9.7.0-14535248.bin
The file includes an installation script and an embedded RPM package.
NOTE: You cannot run the installation file from a directory whose pathname includes any embedded space characters. - If the installer detects a version of vCloud Director that is equal to or later than the version in the installation file, it displays an error message and exits
If the installer detects an earlier version of vCloud Director, it prompts you to confirm the upgrade. - Enter
yand press Enter to confirm the upgrade
The installer initiates the following upgrade workflow.Verifies that the host meets all requirements.- Unpacks the vCloud Director RPM package.
- After all active vCloud Director jobs on the cell finish, stops vCloud Director services on the server and upgrades the installed vCloud Director software.
- When changing the existing global.properties file on the target server, the installer displays a warning
If you previously updated the existing global.properties file, you can retrieve the changes from global.properties.rpmnew. - (Optional) Update logging properties
After an upgrade, new logging properties are written to the file/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/log4j.properties.rpmnew
When the vCloud Director upgrade finishes, the installer displays a message with information about the location of the old configuration files. Then the installer prompts you to run the database upgrade tool.
Upgrade the vCloud Director Database
From an upgraded vCloud Director server, you run a tool that upgrades the vCloud Director database. You must not restart any upgraded vCloud Director server before upgrading the shared database.
Information about all running and recently completed tasks is stored in the vCloud Director database. Because a database upgrade invalidates this task information, the database upgrade utility verifies that no tasks are running when the upgrade process begins
All cells in a vCloud Director server group share the same database. Regardless of how many cells you are upgrading, you upgrade the database only once. After the database is upgraded, vCloud Director cells that are not upgraded cannot connect to the database You must upgrade all cells so that they connect to the upgraded database.
Prerequisites
- Back up your existing database. Use the procedures that your database software vendor recommends.
- Verify that all vCloud Director cells in the server group are stopped. The upgraded cells are stopped during the upgrade process. If there are vCloud Director servers that are not yet upgraded, you can use the cell management tool to quiesce and shut down their services. For information about how to manage a cell by using the cell management tool, see vCloud Director Administrator’s Guide.
- If your vCloud Director installation uses an Oracle database, migrate to a PostgeSQL database. For information about migrating to a PostgreSQL database, see the cell management tool reference in vCloud Director Administrator’s Guide.
- Run the database upgrade utility with or without options
#/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade
If the database upgrade utility detects an incompatible version of NSX Manager, it displays a warning message and cancels the upgrade. - On the prompt, enter
yand press Enter to confirm the database upgrade. - On the prompt, enter y and press Enter to confirm that you backed up the database
- If the utility detects an active cell, on the prompt to continue, enter n to exit the shell, then verify that no cells are running and retry the upgrade from
The database upgrade tool runs and displays progress messages. When the upgrade finishes, you are prompted to start the vCloud Director service on the current server.
How the upgrade process should look on your Linux console
Checking free disk space...done
Checking for a supported Linux distribution...Detected CentOS system
done
Checking for necessary RPM prerequisites...done
Extracting VMware vCloud Director. Please wait, this could take a few minutes...
vmware-vcloud-director-24.2019.08.30-14534864.x86_64.rpm
vmware-vcloud-director-rhel-24.2019.08.30-14534864.x86_64.rpm
vmware-vcloud-director-h5ui-24.2019.08.30-14534864.x86_64.rpm
vmware-phonehome-1.0.0-14389576.noarch.rpm
done
Verifying RPM signatures...done
An older version of VMware vCloud Director has been detected and will be
upgraded to 9.7.0.
If you choose to proceed, the installer will stop the vmware-vcd service,
back up any configuration files from the previous release and migrate the
product configuration as necessary.
Would you like to upgrade now? (y/n)?
Upgrading VMware vCloud Director...
Installing the VMware vCloud Director 9.7.0 RPM...
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:vmware-vcloud-director-########################################### [ 25%]
2:vmware-vcloud-director
warning: /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/global.properties created as /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/global.properties.rpmnew
warning: /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/log4j.properties created as /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/log4j.properties.rpmnew
########################################### [ 50%]
3:vmware-vcloud-director-########################################### [ 75%]
4:vmware-phonehome ########################################### [100%]
Update completed.
done
No DSA certificates found; disabling DSA ciphers for SSL/TLS connections. See KB 2056026 for details
Upgrade installation complete.
Next steps:
You will need to upgrade the database schema before starting the
vmware-vcd service. The product upgrade tool should be run only once per
vCloud Director group. The tool may be run with the following command:
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade
# /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade
Welcome to the vCloud Director upgrade utility
Verify that you have a valid license key to use the version of the
vCloud Director software to which you are upgrading.
This utility will apply several updates to the database. Please
ensure you have created a backup of your database prior to continuing.
Do you wish to upgrade the product now? [Y/N] y
Examining database at URL: jdbc:postgresql://10.11.12.13:5432/vcloud?socketTimeout=90
The next step in the upgrade process will change the vCloud Director database schema.
Backup your database now using the tools provided by your database vendor.
Enter [Y] after the backup is complete.
Running 5 upgrade tasks
Executing upgrade task:
Successfully ran upgrade task
Executing upgrade task:
Successfully ran upgrade task
Executing upgrade task:
Successfully ran upgrade task
Executing upgrade task:
.........\Successfully ran upgrade task
Executing upgrade task:
...............[15]
Successfully ran upgrade task
Database upgrade complete
Running 1 upgrade tasks
Executing upgrade task:
.....................[21]
Successfully ran upgrade task
Upgrade complete
Would you like to start the vCloud Director service now? If you choose not
to start it now, you can manually start it at any time using this command:
service vmware-vcd start
Start it now? [y/n]
Monitoring vCloud Director services status
Look for these lines to validate cell started by running tail on cell log
# tail -f /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/cell.log
Application initialization detailed status report: 95% complete
com.vmware.vcloud.vcell-runtime-impl Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.common-cell-impl Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.common-util Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.api-framework Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.common-vmomi Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.jax-rs-activator Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.pbm.placementengine Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.vim-proxy Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.foundation Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.imagetransfer-server Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.storage Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.compute Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.net Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.service-extensibility Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.backend-core Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.vapp-lifecycle Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.content-library Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.presentation-api-impl Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.metrics-core Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.multi-site-core Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.multi-site-api Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.rest-api-handlers Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.jax-rs-servlet Subsystem Status: [COMPLETE]
com.vmware.vcloud.ui-vcloud-webapp Subsystem Status: [WAITING]
Application Initialization: 'com.vmware.vcloud.common.core' 100% complete. Subsystem 'com.vmware.vcloud.ui-vcloud-webapp' started
Application Initialization: 'com.vmware.vcloud.common.core' complete.
Successfully handled all queued events.
Successfully verified transfer spooling area: /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer
Cell startup completed in 2m 06s