Upgrading on-premises and provider site

Follow the upgrade path and choose an upgrade method for the currently installed VMware Cloud Director Availability version. After following the prerequisites, choose a source repository for the upgrade files then perform the upgrade.

Note:

vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites requires upgraded versions in both sites:

Before upgrading to version 4.6, upgrade both sites to version 4.5.

After upgrading one of the sites, the existing replications continue to replicate and can be recovered in case of disaster, but the paired site must be upgraded before creating new replications or new pairing and before performing any administrative operations and other day 2 management tasks.

Prerequisite for re-establishing tenant trust with the provider after upgrade for vSphere DR and migration

After upgrading both sites, the tenant site must Re-pair with the provider site. For information about re-pairing from the tenant site, see step 3 in Repair sites.

Also for vSphere DR and migration, if using a single-sign-on administrator user with custom privileges in vSphere, you must add the StorageViews.View privilege. For information about the required vSphere privileges, see Users roles rights and sessions in the Security Guide.

Upgrade Paths

For on-premises site upgrade to the latest version, use the following upgrade methods, according to the currently installed version.


Current Version	Next Version	Upgrade Method
4.4.x or 4.5.x	4.6	You can upgrade by using the appliance management interface, see the updated Management interface upgrading procedures. Alternatively, you can upgrade by using the command-line interface, see the updated Command-line upgrading procedures.
4.3.x or 4.4.x	4.5.x
4.2.x or 4.3.x	4.4.x
4.0.x or 4.1.x	4.2.1
3.0.x or 3.5.x	4.0	You can upgrade by using the appliance management interface, see the legacy Management Interface Upgrading procedures. Alternatively, you can upgrade by using the command-line interface, see the legacy Command-Line Upgrading procedures.
3.0	4.0	You must upgrade only by using the command-line interface, see the legacy Command-Line Upgrading On-Premises procedures.

Important:

Interoperability with paired peer sites running earlier VMware Cloud Director Availability versions:: For information about interoperability between paired sites that run mismatching versions of VMware Cloud Director Availability, see Paired sites versions interoperability.

Before upgrading the On-Premises to Cloud Director Replication Appliance:
- Ensure that you have not manually enabled the Photon repository of the appliance.
  To verify for enabled repositories, open an SSH connection to the appliance, log in by using the root user credentials and run the following command:
```
yum -v repolist all | grep enabled
```
  When no repository is active, the command returns no result and you can proceed with the upgrade.
- Ensure that you have not installed any packages or third-party software or made any manual modifications of yum configuration files.
To complete the upgrade sequence, see Post-upgrade configuration.

Upgrade Repository

To upgrade VMware Cloud Director Availability, you can configure the appliance to download the upgrade files from one of the following source repositories.


Repository	Description
An ISO image	Use an upgrade ISO file mounted in the virtual appliance CD-ROM drive for environments without an external Internet access.
A specified repository	To upgrade multiple appliances or after deploying the appliances in different datastores, specify a repository as a content source: You can specify a local repository where you can upload the upgrade files, for environments where the network restricts the online Internet access to the appliances. Alternatively, with available Internet access, specify https://packages-prod.broadcom.com/vcav/4.6/ as an online upgrade repository.