The goal of this chapter is to help you understand and execute the process of upgrading your core vSphere infrastructure to VMware vSphere 6.5. The core includes your ESXi Hypervisor, vCenter Server, and vCenter Server's components. The upgrade of the third layer products that leverage the core vSphere infrastructure, such as vCloud Director and VMware Horizon View, are not covered in this chapter as they are beyond the scope and purpose of this book.
Before we begin, let me introduce you to the core infrastructure components that will be upgraded:
- VMware vCenter Server: The viability of an upgrade or the need for a new build will depend on the current version of vCenter and the supported upgrade path.
- vCenter Single Sign-On: These are authentication components. They will come into the picture if you are upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to 6.5.
- vCenter Inventory Service: This is no longer a separate service in vCenter 6.5.
- vSphere Web Client: This can be upgraded if the current version is 5.5; if not, it will be a new installation of this component.
- vSphere Platform Service Controller (PSC): If you are upgrading from vSphere 6.0 to 6.5, you will need to review the current deployment model and apply an apt strategy to upgrade PSC.
- vSphere Update Manager: VUM should be updated to the latest version before it can be used to upgrade ESXi hosts managed by the vCenter VUM is integrated with. VUM components are now built-in to the vCenter Appliance.
- vSphere Auto Deploy: This is a requirement to upgrade vSphere Auto Deploy to the same version of vCenter Server.
- VMware ESXi: This can be upgraded by booting the server using the ISO image, using vSphere Update Manager, or updating the image profile if the existing servers are auto-deployed.
