You can upgrade your Automation Orchestrator 8.x or later deployment to the latest product version by using a mounted ISO image. Upgrading Automation Orchestrator 7.x or earlier to Automation Orchestrator 8.x is not supported.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that your Automation Orchestrator upgrade path is supported. See the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix.
  • Download and mount the ISO image:
    1. Download the ISO image from the official VMware download site.
    2. Connect the CD-ROM drive of the Automation Orchestrator Appliance virtual machine in vSphere. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration documentation.
      Note: After connecting the CD-ROM drive, navigate to your Automation Orchestrator Appliance VM settings page and verify that Connect At Power On is enabled.
    3. Mount the ISO image to the CD-ROM drive of the Automation Orchestrator Appliance virtual machine in vSphere. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration documentation.
  • Before upgrading Automation Orchestrator deployments authenticated with VMware Aria Automation, verify that the VMware Aria Automation product version matches the version of Automation Orchestrator you are upgrading to. For example, if you are upgrading to Automation Orchestrator 8.9, you must verify you are using VMware Aria Automation 8.9 as a authentication provider.
  • If you are upgrading Automation Orchestrator from a version older than 8.8, you might have to activate basic authentication. For more information, go to Activate Basic Authentication.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the Automation Orchestrator Appliance command line as root.
  2. Run the blkid command, and note the device name for the Automation Orchestrator Appliance CD-ROM drive.
  3. Mount the CD-ROM drive. 
    mount /dev/xxx /mnt/cdrom
    Important: For clustered Automation Orchestrator deployments, you must perform steps 2 and 3 on all nodes in the cluster.
  4. Back up your Automation Orchestrator deployment by taking a virtual machine (VM) snapshot. See Take a Snapshot of a Virtual Machine.
    Caution: Automation Orchestrator 8.x does not currently support memory snapshots. Before taking the snapshot of your Automation Orchestrator deployment, verify that the Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory option is deactivated.
  5. To initiate the upgrade, run the vracli upgrade exec -y --repo cdrom:// command on one of the nodes in your deployment.
    Note: For Automation Orchestrator deployments authenticated with vSphere, enter the credentials of the user who registered your deployment with the vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) service. Alternatively you can also, export the your password as a environmental variable. This can be useful for scenarios where you are using an automated script to upgrade multiple Automation Orchestrator deployments. To export the SSO password, run the export VRO_SSO_PASSWORD= your_sso_password command.
    During the upgrade, you are automatically logged out of your terminal, because the Automation Orchestrator Appliance reboots.
  6. Log in to the Automation Orchestrator Appliance command line as root and follow the upgrade progress by running the vracli upgrade status --follow command.
    Caution: The vracli upgrade status --follow command can occasionally display a false error message that indicates that the upgrade has failed. To troubleshoot this problem, see step 7.
  7. (Optional) If you receive an error message while running the vracli upgrade status --follow command, follow these steps:
    1. Verify that you receive the following error message: 
      Running health check after upgrade for nodes and pods.
Health check after upgrade for nodes and pods failed.
... Upgrade terminated due to critical error. Follow the upgrade guide to recover the system. ...
    2. Navigate to the /var/log/vmware/prelude/upgrade-report-latest and confirm that you receive the follwing error: 
      Pod: vco-app-xxxx is not in Ready or Completed state. All pods must be in either of these states
    3. Run the kubectl get pods -n prelude -w | grep -E 'vco|orchestration-ui' command and verify that the status of all 3 vco-app pods and the orchestration-up-app pod is RUNNING.
      Note: It can take up to 5-10 minutes after receiving the error message for all pods to enter the RUNNING state. 
      orchestration-ui-app-xxxx    1/1     Running   0          5h42m
vco-app-xxxx              3/3     Running   0          5h47m
    4. Run the curl -k https://<your_orchestrator_FQDN>/vco/api/healthstatus command and verify that the health check is returning a RUNNING status. 
      {"state":"RUNNING","health-status":{"state":"OK","time":1615296823325},"instance-id":"your_orchestrator_FQDN"}
      Important: The preceding command must run in an environment different from the Automation Orchestrator command line. You can run the command from the command line of a different virtual machine. You can also view the health status information in a browser by navigating directly to https:// <your_orchestrator_FQDN>/vco/api/healthstatus.

Results

You have upgraded your Automation Orchestrator deployment. To troubleshoot possible problems with the upgrade, see Troubleshooting Automation OrchestratorUpgrades.

What to do next

Validate that the Automation Orchestrator Appliance upgrade was successful by running the vracli version command in the command line of the appliance. By running this command, you can validate the product version and build number of the Automation Orchestrator Appliance.