vkernel

I needed to upgrade Cloud Director to 10.2.1 in my home lab. In this blog post, I will show you how to perform a Cloud Director upgrade. My Cloud Director instance only contains a single Cloud Director cell, but I will explain the upgrade process for a Cloud Director with multiple cells/appliances. So that you can use it for a Cloud Director HA setup as well.

VMware docs: Upgrading and Migrating the VMware Cloud Director Appliance

Prerequisites

• Cloud Director 10.2.1 upgrade bundle – link
• Set failover method to manual (Only when using HA setup in Cloud Director)
• Make a snapshot of the Cloud Director Cells.

Change the failover method to manual

I have already created a blog post on setting the failover method to automatic or manual. Please see my previous post.

Create snapshot of Cloud Director cells

1. Power off the primary Cloud Director node by Actions –> Power –> Shutdown Guest OS.

2. Create a snapshot of the Cloud Director cell Actions –> Snapshot –> Take Snapshot.

3. Click on Create to proceed with creating a snapshot.

4. Power on the primary Cloud Director node Actions –> Power –> Power On.

5. Verify the health of all nodes by checking the state at https://vCDCellIP:5480.

Note: Make a note of the primary node.

Transfer the upgrade bundle to the primary node

In my case, I will use WinSCP to transfer the downloaded upgrade bundle to the primary node.

6. Open WinSCP and make a connection to the primary node.

7. Create a new folder in the /tmp/ directory named local-update-package

8. Transfer the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.2.1.5355-17444454_update.tar.gz to the new directory /tmp/local-update-package.

We now need to extract the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.2.1.5355-17444454_update.tar.gz file.

9. Open a SSH session to the primary Cloud Director node and change the directory to /tmp/local-update-package.

10. Extract the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.2.1.5355-17444454_update.tar.gz file.

 tar -zxf VMware_Cloud_Director_v.v.v.v-nnnnnnnn_update.tar.gz

Upgrade Cloud Director Cells.

11. Configure the newly created directory /tmp/local-update-package as the update repository.

vamicli	update --repo file:///tmp/local-update-package

12. Check for new updates from the configured update repository.

vamicli update --check

13. Shutdown Cloud Director with the following command:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u <admin username> cell --shutdown

14. Start the upgrade procedure on the primary node.

vamicli update --install latest

15. Perform step 6 to step 14 on the remaining standby/application nodes.

Upgrade the Cloud Director DB

16. Create a backup of the Cloud Director PostgreSQL Database from the primary node.

/opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-db-backup

17. Perform the upgrade of the Cloud Director database.

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade

18. Reboot each Cloud Director appliance by SSH or GUI.
SSH:

shutdown -r now

GUI: Actions –> Power –> Restart Guest OS

Login to the provider portal to validate the version of the Cloud Director instance.