In a previous article (How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.7 to 7.0 – Stage 1) I walked through the first phase of the upgrade process for vCSA 7.0 – Deploy the OVA File of the new vCenter Server Appliance. In this article I will cover phase 2 of the vCenter upgrade – transfer the data and setup the newly deployed vCenter Server Appliance.
Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.7 to 7.0 – Stage 2
In the last step of the phase 1, I was presented with the following screen:
To start phase 2, click on “Continue” button. Stage 2 wizard starts shortly. Click “Next”.
The wizard will run now the pre-upgrade checks.
Make sure you read and understand the warnings you may receive before moving on. In my case, I had few warnings about disabling fully automated DRS, a vRealize Orchestrator extension, and certain configuration files which will not be copied over. Click “Close”.
We then need to select which data will be transferred to the new instance. I left the default (Configuration and inventory, no historical data). Click “Next”.
Now we need to decide if we enroll into CEIP – VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program. Click “Next”.
We can now check all the choices we made. We need to confirm we have a backup of the source systems and we can click on “Finish”.
Are we sure? Yes we do 🙂 Click “OK”.
Data transfer will start immediately. We are now at the first step (Copy data from source vCenter Server to target vCenter Server). Wizard will pass through different stages. After this step the original vCSA 6.7 will be powered off.
First step is completed, moving to the second step now – Set up target vCenter Server and start services. This starts one by one all vCenter services – you may watch the progress as displayed in the wizard.
Finally, the third and last step imports copied data to the target vCenter. Wizard will stop few services, then will import data, and will execute post-upgrade actions.
Read and understand the messages displayed about TLS protocols and Auto Deploy settings. When done, click “Close”.
Upgrade is complete now. You can find a link to vCSA Getting Started page. Click on it.
We can see the appliance start page now, with only one link to the vSphere Client (no more Flash client, good news).
And here is the HTML5 web client of vSphere 7.0!
Enjoy the upgrade to vCenter Server 7.0 🙂
