To successfully upgrade VMware Cloud Director Availability, take snapshots of all the appliances and upgrade each appliance according to a specific order.

Upgrade the sites running VMware Cloud Director Availability in the following order:
  1. In the local cloud site, upgrade all the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
  2. In remote paired sites, upgrade all the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
  3. Upgrade all the on-premises appliances.
In a VMware Cloud Director Availability cloud site, upgrade all the appliances according to the following procedure:

Prerequisites

Important:
  • Verify that before starting the upgrade, current snapshots of all the appliances exist in the site.

    Take snapshots either with all the VMware Cloud Director Availability services stopped or with the appliances powered off.

  • Verify that before starting the upgrade, 60% free disk space, or more exists on all the appliances in the site.
  • Verify that the sites are prepared for replication interruptions and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) violations.

Procedure

  1. Power off the Tunnel Appliance and all Replicator Appliance instances running in the local cloud site.
  2. Upgrade the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance and after a successful upgrade, power off the appliance.

    If the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance upgrade fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

  3. Power on a single Replicator Appliance instance.
    1. Upgrade the Replicator Appliance instance.
    2. After a successful upgrade, power off the upgraded Replicator Appliance instance.

      If the upgrade of a Replicator Appliance instance fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

    3. Repeat this step for all the remaining Replicator Appliance instances in the local cloud site.
  4. Power on the Tunnel Appliance.
    1. Upgrade the Tunnel Appliance.
    2. After a successful upgrade, power on the upgraded Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance and all the upgraded Replicator Appliance instances.

      If the Tunnel Appliance upgrade fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

    All the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances in the local cloud site are upgraded and powered on.
  5. Delete all snapshots.
    Note: Any other snapshot operation except the ones described in the first prerequisite and in steps: 2, 3b, 4b, and 5 is not supported and can potentially break VMware Cloud Director Availability.

Results

The VMware Cloud Director Availability in the local cloud site is successfully upgraded.

What to do next

After upgrading the local cloud site, the remote cloud sites, and upgrading the on-premises appliances, you can start using the new VMware Cloud Director Availability version.