Before you embark upon the journey of upgrading all of the various components of your vSphere infrastructure, it is essential to prepare and layout the effects of upgrading the components, which include accounting for any necessary downtime. So, where do we begin? The answer depends on the components/solutions in our environment and the effects of their compatibility once upgraded.

We start by using reference works such as the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices and VMware Compatibility Guides. The same applies to other products/solutions in our environment. For example, if we have a third-party backup solution, then it is critical to ensure that the backup solution is compatible with the version of vSphere we are upgrading to.

Another critical aspect is failure mitigation. What if the upgrade fails? It is essential to include...

VMware Migration Assistant is used as a proxy agent so that you can gather configuration information about the vCenter components running on Microsoft Windows and run pre-upgrade checks, and it aids in the transfer of data from the Windows machine to the vCenter appliance.

In this recipe, you will learn how to run VMware Migration Assistant on Windows machines by running the PSC, vCenter, and Update Manager vCenter components.

Before you begin, download the vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 Installer ISO and mount it to the Windows machine that's running the PSC or vCenter.

In an environment where the PSCs are externalized, you will need to upgrade all of the PSCs in an SSO domain first before the corresponding vCenter Servers can be upgraded. During the upgrade, the PSCs will be of a later version compared to their corresponding vCenters. Such a mixed version configuration is only supported during the course of the upgrade.

In this recipe, we will learn how to upgrade or migrate PSCs.

You will need the following before you proceed with the upgrade:

• An understanding of the current topology: You will need to identify all of the PSCs in a single SSO domain. vCenters corresponding to these PSCs will be in an Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM...

vSphere 6.7 is the last release to include or support the installation of vCenter on Windows. Going forward, all vCenter versions will be Appliances. Therefore, it makes sense to adopt the appliance model. A Windows-based vCenter can be migrated (during the upgrade process) to become an appliance.

In this recipe, we will cover the steps involved in upgrading vCenter, assuming that their corresponding PSCs have already been upgraded.

You will need the following to be able to complete this recipe:

• VCSA 6.7 Installer ISO
• FQDN or IP address of the source vCenter
• Temporary IPs for the VCSA

Starting with vSphere 6.7, there is no need to externalize the PSC for ELM, thereby making it simpler to protect vCenter Servers using vCenter High Availability (vCHA). However, if your existing environment has external PSCs, then upgrading them to vCenter 6.7 will retain the same topology.

With vCenter 6.7 Update 1, VMware includes a Convergence Tool, which can be used to install PSC components into existing VCSA 6.7U1 nodes and migrate the PSC configuration from the external PSCs into it, thereby getting rid of the external PSC nodes.

PSC 6.7 U1 (Windows) cannot be converted into embedded components of an existing vCenter. The Convergence Tools only work with vCenter and PSC Appliances.

Once you are done upgrading the management layer (vCenters/PSCs), the ESXi hosts in the environment can be upgraded. There is more than one way to upgrade ESXi hosts, and the way you do so also depends on how they were deployed previously. For instance, if the hosts are running stateless/stateful auto-deployed ESXi hosts, then it wouldn't make sense to use the interactive installer to upgrade the hosts. The ESXi host can be upgraded without needing to console into each of them using VMware Update Manager. We will learn how to use Update Manager in Chapter 14, Upgrading and Patching Using vSphere Update Manager.

Other methods include using the ESXi CLI or a kickstart script.

In this recipe, we will learn how to use the interactive installer to upgrade ESXi.

ESXi can be upgraded from the CLI. Unlike the interactive method, the CLI requires the use of an offline ZIP bundle.

Here is what you will need to perform an ESXi upgrade using the CLI:

• Ensure that the hardware is compatible with ESXi 6.7.
• Ensure that the version running is ESXi 6.0 U3 or later.
• Download the ESXi 6.7 OEM offline bundle's .zip file .
• SSH access to the ESXi host and the root password.

The following procedure will guide you through the steps involved in upgrading an ESXi host from its command-line interface:

1. Upload the ESXi Offline ZIP bundle to any of the datastores that are accessible by the ESXi host. This can be done by using the Upload...