Prerequisites and Best Practices for Site Recovery Manager Upgrade

Before you upgrade Site Recovery Manager, you must perform preparatory tasks on both Site Recovery Manager sites and verify that you have certain information.

• Make a full backup of the Site Recovery Manager database by using the tools that the database software provides. For information about how to back up the embedded database, see Back Up and Restore the Embedded vPostgres Database. Migration of data from an external database to the embedded database is not supported. Failure to back up the database results in the loss of all Site Recovery Manager data if the upgrade fails.
• Perform a configuration export by using the VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.7 Configuration Import/Export Tool. See, Exporting and Importing Site Recovery Manager Configuration Data.
• If you configured advanced settings in the existing installation, take a note of the settings that you configured in Site Pair > Configure > Advanced Settings in the Site Recovery user interface.
• Site Recovery Manager 8.5.x was the last general version to support storage policy protection groups (SPPG). Before upgrading to Site Recovery Manager 8.7, make sure to migrate all your storage policy protection groups to regular array-based replication protection groups. See Migrating Storage Policy Protection Groups to Array-Based Replication Protection Groups.
• Before you upgrade, check the supported upgrade paths.

  For information about supported upgrade paths, see Upgrade Path > VMware Site Recovery Manager in the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes at https://interopmatrix.vmware.com/Upgrade before you upgrade.

• The local and remote vCenter Server instances must be running when you upgrade Site Recovery Manager.
• Upgrade the vCenter Server on the site on which you are upgrading Site Recovery Manager to a supported version.
  • When you upgrade or migrate a vCenter Server deployment using an external Platform Services Controller, you must first converge the external Platform Services Controller to an embedded Platform Services Controller and then perform the upgrade or migration. For more information, see Upgrade or Migration for vCenter Server Instances with an External Platform Services Controller.
  • For information about how to upgrade vCenter Server and its components, see vCenter Server Upgrade in the ESXi and vCenter Server Documentation.
  • For information about compatibility between vCenter Server and Site Recovery Manager versions, see vCenter Server Requirements in the Compatibility Matrices for Site Recovery Manager 8.7 at https://docs.vmware.com/en/Site-Recovery-Manager/8.7/rn/compatibility-matrices-for-vmware-site-recovery-manager-87/index.html.
  • For information about the order in which to upgrade the components on each site, see Order of Upgrading vSphere and Site Recovery Manager Components.
• Obtain the address of the vCenter Server appliance instance for both sites.
• Obtain the vCenter Single Sign-On administrator user name and password for both of the local and remote sites.
• To use Site Recovery Manager with vSphere Replication, upgrade vSphere Replication before you upgrade Site Recovery Manager Server. After upgrading vSphere Replication, you must restart the Site Recovery Manager Server. See Order of Upgrading vSphere and Site Recovery Manager Components.
  • For information about how to upgrade vSphere Replication, see Upgrading vSphere Replication in vSphere Replication Administration.
  • For information about compatibility between vSphere Replication and Site Recovery Manager versions, see vSphere Replication Requirements in the Compatibility Matrices for Site Recovery Manager 8.7 at https://docs.vmware.com/en/Site-Recovery-Manager/8.7/rn/compatibility-matrices-for-vmware-site-recovery-manager-87/index.html.
• If you cannot upgrade an existing incompatible version of vSphere Replication, you must unregister vSphere Replication from both vCenter Server instances before you upgrade Site Recovery Manager. Incompatible versions of Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication cause the vSphere Web Client to stop working. See Unregister an Incompatible Version of vSphere Replication.
• If you use custom certificates, obtain an appropriate certificate file. Custom certificates must use at least the SHA1, or preferably SHA256, thumbprint algorithm. This release of Site Recovery Manager does not support certificates that use the MD5 thumbprint algorithm. See Requirements When Using Custom SSL/TLS Certificates With Site Recovery Manager.
• Important: Verify that there are no pending cleanup operations on recovery plans and that there are no configuration issues for the virtual machines that Site Recovery Manager protects.

  • All recovery plans are in the Ready state.
  • The protection status of all the protection groups is OK.
  • The protection status of all the individual virtual machines in the protection groups is OK.
  • The recovery status of all the protection groups is Ready.