From an upgraded VMware Cloud Director server, you run a tool that upgrades the VMware Cloud Director database. You must not restart any upgraded VMware Cloud Director server before upgrading the shared database.

Information about all running and recently completed tasks is stored in the VMware Cloud Director database. Because a database upgrade invalidates this task information, the database upgrade utility verifies that no tasks are running when the upgrade process begins.

All cells in a VMware Cloud Director server group share the same database. Regardless of how many cells you are upgrading, you upgrade the database only once. After the database is upgraded, VMware Cloud Director cells that are not upgraded cannot connect to the database. You must upgrade all cells so that they connect to the upgraded database.

Prerequisites

  • Back up your existing database. Use the procedures that your database software vendor recommends.
  • Verify that all VMware Cloud Director cells in the server group are stopped. The upgraded cells are stopped during the upgrade process. If there are VMware Cloud Director servers that are not yet upgraded, you can use the cell management tool to quiesce and shut down their services. For information about how to manage a cell by using the cell management tool, see Cell Management Tool Reference.
  • Review the Database Upgrade Utility Reference topic.

Procedure

  1. Run the database upgrade utility with or without options. 
    /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade
    If the database upgrade utility detects an incompatible version of NSX Manager, it displays a warning message and cancels the upgrade.
  2. On the prompt, enter y and press Enter to confirm the database upgrade.
  3. On the prompt, enter y and press Enter to confirm that you backed up the database.
    If you used the --backup-completed option, the utility skips this prompt.
  4. If the utility detects an active cell, on the prompt to continue, enter n to exit the shell, then verify that no cells are running and retry the upgrade from Step 1.

Results

The database upgrade tool runs and displays progress messages. When the upgrade finishes, you are prompted to start the VMware Cloud Director service on the current server.

What to do next

Enter y and press Enter or start the service at a later time by running the service vmware-vcd start command.

You can start the services of the upgraded VMware Cloud Director servers.

You can upgrade the rest VMware Cloud Director members of the server group and start their services. See Upgrade a VMware Cloud Director Cell.