VCenter 6.0 Update Installation

[Skiver Veteran]

Hi All,

 

Stupid noob question here but I don't ever seem to have good experiences with just about any VMware products so I guess I'm just looking for a little reassurance that there isn't something glaringly obvious that I need to be considering.

 

Currently running VCenter 6.0.0 at somewhere around U1 build, U2a has been released and fixes and issue I've been struggling with for months. Now I'm in the middle of a big project at the moment which involves moving VMs out of one VCenter in another location (geographically) onto new hosts managed by the VCenter in question hence my hesitation.

 

I have been putting off this upgrade because I don't want to break things mid-project however, the issue is causing me to have to restart VCenter pretty much once a day to keep things functioning smoothly and because it manages systems used by people in different locations, time zones don't always match up meaning the users can't do their stuff for most of their working day till I'm back online or I'll be having to fire my laptop up in evenings etc and neither one is ideal.

 

So on to the actual question, when doing the update I'm pretty sure the process is going to be to stick the ISO in, let it do all the pre-install checks and providing it's all in the green run it and we're done? I'm obviously going to back up any of the databases and as the VCenter is also a VM (Windows, not Appliance) I can take a snapshot before for a quick revert if need be. 

 

Am I missing something?

[Stokkolm]

Patching Windows vCenter usually goes pretty smoothly. It's a simple MSI installer, so not much can really go wrong. vCenter will need to be rebooted obviously, but apart from that you SHOULDN'T have problems. Having said that, I have had issues with upgrades on borked vCenter environments, but that was mainly with upgrading from 5.5 to 6.0 and going from Windows to VCSA. 

 

What I always do is take a snapshot of the vCenter VM prior to upgrading and ensuring that I have a current database backup. That way, if anything goes wrong it should be really easy to go back.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Stokkolm

[Skiver Veteran]

Cheers, that's pretty much what I had in mind but my relationship with vCenter is not a good one so thought I'd see if anyone else had some words of advice

[Skiver Veteran]

Finally got round to do this, I've posted on the VMware Community but so far zero responses so doing a basic copy and paste and crossing all that I can cross....

 

I will start with I have had a ticket open in the past for the first failed upgrade attempt and I have opened a new one for the current, I'm still waiting for feedback but I have a limited window in order to make this work so trying every avenue possible!

 

Long story short, after some certificate issues that caused the first upgrade to fail Vmware support suggest I reset all certs (Option 8 in VMCAD) and to try the upgrade again.

 

Now, this seemed to work and if I go to the SSO URL I can see the cert has today's date but is not from a trusted CA.

 

 

However, when running the GUI based update (this is Windows Server 2012 R2, no VCSA) I get the same error regardless;

 

 

The log file doesn't give much but I have noticed just above the error it seems to be referencing 127.0.0.1 when doing it's check which doesn't make a great deal of sense to me when you consider this is doing a cert check but this may be my misunderstanding.

 

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ParsePreUpgradeOutput: IC host: 127.0.0.1.

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ParsePreUpgradeOutput: IC port: 7444.

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ParsePreUpgradeOutput: IC URL: /sso-adminserver/sdk/vsphere.local.

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ProcessInstallArguments: processing installArguments for upgrade_framework

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ProcessInstallArguments: vmdir.ldu-guid = 5ab2ac11-482b-11e4-a2ef-00155d2a1902

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| W: ProcessInstallArguments: clobbering previous value 5ab2ac11-482b-11e4-a2ef-00155d2a1902

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: ProcessInstallArguments: vmdir.site-guid = 5ab2ac10-482b-11e4-a2ef-00155d2a1902

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| W: ProcessInstallArguments: clobbering previous value 5ab2ac10-482b-11e4-a2ef-00155d2a1902

2017-03-29 09:15:08.529+01:00| vcsInstUtil-4602587| I: PitCA_MessageBox: Displaying message: "Error: Certificate has expired

Resolution: Regenerate certificates for sso and try again"

 

This has been about a month of rescheduling just to get another days downtime so I'm desperate to get to the bottom of this so any help is appreciated.

[Skiver Veteran]

So a mistake on my part, that log file has a port in the URL and I missed it, if I browse to that URL with the port I do indeed see a cert that has expired, so question is, how do I get rid of it?! Right now I don't care if my certificates are trusted or not, I just need to get the upgrade done and I can worry about those later. 

 

VMCAD did not do the business first time so I doubt a second run will help but I will try it.