Upgrading ESXi hosts and virtual machines is the most time-consuming aspect of this middle phase of a Horizon 7 upgrade.

This procedure provides an overview of the tasks you must perform during the second and subsequent maintenance windows. To complete some of these tasks, you might need step-by-step instructions found in the VMware vSphere Upgrade Guide and the Horizon 7 Administration document.

For details about which versions of Horizon are compatible with which versions of vCenter Server and ESXi, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php.

Important: The following table describes which Horizon 7 features depend on specific virtual hardware versions and therefore might require a virtual machine upgrade.
Table 1. Virtual Hardware Versions Required for Specific Features
Feature Virtual Hardware Version Corresponding vSphere Version
Space-efficient disk format for linked-clone pools 9 or later vSphere 5.1 or later
VMware® vSAN® datastores, first version 10 or later vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or later
VMware vSAN datastores, second version 11 or later vSphere 6.0 or later
VMware Virtual Volumes datastores 11 or later vSphere 6.0 or later
Native NFS snapshot technology (VAAI) 9 or later vSphere 5.1 or later
Virtual shared graphics acceleration 8 or later vSphere 5.0 or later
Virtual dedicated graphics acceleration 9 or later vSphere 5.1 or later
NVIDIA GRID vGPU graphics acceleration 11 or later vSphere 6.0 or later

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Upgrade ESXi hosts, cluster by cluster.
    For instructions, see the VMware vSphere Upgrade Guide. If your clusters contain vSAN datastores, also see the chapter about upgrading the vSAN cluster, in the Administering VMware vSAN document. This chapter contains a topic about upgrading ESXi hosts.

    If you have many clusters, this step could take several maintenance windows to complete. Upgrading ESXi hosts might include the following tasks:

    1. Use VMware vSphere® vMotion® to move the virtual machines off of the ESXi host.
    2. Put the host into maintenance mode.
    3. Perform the upgrade.
    4. Use VMotion to move the virtual machines back onto the host.
    5. Perform post-upgrade tasks for ESXi hosts.
    Every host must be a member of a cluster, as mentioned in the prerequisites.
  2. If an upgraded host does not reconnect itself to vCenter Server, use vSphere Client to reconnect the host to vCenter Server.
  3. If you use View Composer, after all ESXi hosts are upgraded, on the vCenter Server host, restart the View Composer service.
  4. (Optional) Upgrade VMware® Tools™ and the virtual machines on all parent virtual machines, virtual machine templates, and virtual machines that host Horizon 7 server components such as Connection Server instances.
    1. Plan for down time, as described in the VMware vSphere Upgrade Guide.
    2. Update VMware Tools, and upgrade the virtual machine hardware for virtual machines that will be used as sources for remote desktops.
      For step-by-step instructions if you plan not to use VMware vSphere ® Update Manager™, see the chapter about upgrading virtual machines in the VMware vSphere Virtual Machine Administration document.

      If you use VMware vSphere Update Manager, you can update VMware Tools and then the virtual hardware version in the correct order for all the virtual machines in a particular folder. See the VMware vSphere Upgrade Guide.

  5. (Optional) If you use full-clone desktops, on each virtual machine, upgrade VMware Tools and the virtual hardware for virtual machines that will be used as sources for remote desktops.
    For step-by-step instructions if you plan not to use VMware vSphere ® Update Manager™, see the chapter about upgrading virtual machines in the VMware vSphere Virtual Machine Administration document.

    If you use vSphere Update Manager, you can update VMware Tools and then the virtual hardware version in the correct order for all the virtual machines in a particular folder. See the VMware vSphere Upgrade Guide.

What to do next

Upgrade the agent software. See Upgrade View Agent or Horizon Agent.