Upgrading and Migrating the VMware Cloud Director Appliance

The VMware Cloud Director appliance includes an embedded PostgreSQL database with a high availability function. You can upgrade the VMware Cloud Director appliance to a later version. You can also migrate your existing earlier version of VMware Cloud Director with an external PostgreSQL database to a VMware Cloud Director environment that consists of VMware Cloud Director appliance deployments version 10.0 or later.

Upgrading the VMware Cloud Director Appliance

For the upgrade of VMware Cloud Director appliance version 9.7 to version 10.4, see Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.

Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.0, Microsoft SQL Server databases are unsupported.

When you are upgrading VMware Cloud Director, the new version must be compatible with the following components of your existing installation:

The database software you are currently using for the VMware Cloud Director database. For more information, see the Upgrade and Migration Paths table.
The VMware vSphere ^® release you are currently using.
The VMware NSX^® release that you are currently using.
Any third-party components that directly interact with VMware Cloud Director.

For information about the compatibility of VMware Cloud Director with other VMware products and with third-party databases, refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices at http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide/sim/interop_matrix.php. If you plan to upgrade your vSphere or NSX components as part of the VMware Cloud Director upgrade, you must upgrade them after the upgrade of VMware Cloud Director. See After You Upgrade VMware Cloud Director.

After you upgrade at least one VMware Cloud Director server, you can upgrade the VMware Cloud Director database. The database stores information about the runtime state of the server, including the state of all VMware Cloud Director tasks it is running. To ensure that no invalid task information remains in the database after an upgrade, you must verify that no tasks are active on any server before you begin the upgrade.

The upgrade also preserves the local and global properties files which are copied to the new installation and are not stored in the VMware Cloud Director database.

The upgrade requires sufficient VMware Cloud Director downtime to upgrade all servers in the server group and the database. If you are using a load balancer, you can configure it to a return a message, for example, The system is offline for upgrade.

Important:

If you are upgrading the VMware Cloud Director appliance to version 10.4.1, the embedded PostgreSQL database upgrades from version 10 to version 14. This process involves cloning the existing database contents to a new local instance, which results in a temporary increase in disk utilization. Because of this, verify that before starting the upgrade, you have sufficient free space on the database disk. Because the cloning process only includes the database contents and not the database logs nor the write-ahead logs that are used for replication, verify that the database logs are backed up in compliance with your organization's log retention policies. See Verify the Embedded PostgreSQL Database is Ready for Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1.

Starting with version 10.1, service providers and tenants can use the VMware Cloud Director API to test connections to remote servers, and to verify the server identity as part of an SSL handshake. To protect VMware Cloud Director network connections, configure a deny list of internal hosts that are unreachable to tenants who are using the VMware Cloud Director API for connection testing. Configure the deny list after the VMware Cloud Director installation or upgrade and before granting tenants access to VMware Cloud Director. See Configure a Test Connection Denylist.

Important: After upgrading to version 10.1 and later, VMware Cloud Director always verifies certificates for any infrastructure endpoints connected to it. This is due to a change in the way VMware Cloud Director manages SSL certificates. If you do not import your certificates into VMware Cloud Director before the upgrade, the vCenter Server and NSX connections might show failed connection errors due to SSL verification issues. In this case, after upgrading, you have two options:

Run the cell management tool trust-infra-certs command to import automatically all certificates into the centralized certificate store. See Import Endpoints Certificates from vSphere Resources.
In the Service Provider Admin Portal UI, select each vCenter Server and NSX instance, and reenter the credentials while accepting the certificate.

Migrating the VMware Cloud Director Appliance

If your existing VMware Cloud Director server group consists of VMware Cloud Director 9.5 appliance deployments, you can only migrate your environment to a more recent version of the VMware Cloud Director appliance. Use the VMware Cloud Director installer for Linux to upgrade the existing environment only as part of the migration workflow. See Migrating to vCloud Director Appliance.

If your VMware Cloud Director environment uses an external Oracle database or an external Microsoft SQL database, you must migrate to a PostgreSQL database before upgrading to VMware Cloud Director 10.4. For upgrade paths, see Upgrading VMware Cloud Director on Linux.

Upgrade and Migration Paths and Workflows


Source environment	Target environment
Source environment	VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4 with an embedded PostgreSQL database
VMware Cloud Director 9.7 on Linux with an external Microsoft SQL Server database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 9.7. See Migrating vCloud Director with an External Microsoft SQL Database to vCloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director 9.7 on Linux with an external PostgreSQL database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 9.7. See Migrating vCloud Director with an External PostgreSQL Database to vCloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director 10.0 on Linux with an external PostgreSQL database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.0. See Migrating vCloud Director with an External PostgreSQL Database to vCloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director 10.1 on Linux with an external PostgreSQL database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.1. See Migrating VMware Cloud Director with an External PostgreSQL Database to VMware Cloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director 10.2 on Linux with an external PostgreSQL database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.2. See Migrating VMware Cloud Director with an External PostgreSQL Database to VMware Cloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director 10.3 on Linux with an external PostgreSQL database	Migrate to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.3. See Migrating VMware Cloud Director with an External PostgreSQL Database to VMware Cloud Director Appliance. Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.
VMware Cloud Director appliance 9.7 and later with an embedded PostgreSQL database	Upgrade your environment to VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.4. See Upgrade the VMware Cloud Director Appliance by Using an Update Package.