Upgrade to the Latest Version of Connection Server on a Different Machine

As part of your upgrade, you can migrate Connection Server to a new machine.

Prerequisites

• Upgrade at least one existing Connection Server instance to the latest version. See Upgrade Connection Servers in a Replicated Group. During this upgrade, your existing Horizon LDAP will be upgraded.
• Verify that the new physical or virtual machine meets the system requirements for installing Connection Server. See Supported Operating Systems for Horizon Connection Server- Install and Upgrade and Hardware Requirements for Horizon Connection Server - Install and Upgrade.
• Familiarize yourself with the security-related requirements of VMware Horizon 8, and verify that these requirements are met. See Upgrade Requirements for Horizon Connection Server.
• Determine when to perform this procedure. Choose an available desktop maintenance window. Budget 15 minutes to half an hour for each instance.
• Verify that you have a domain user account with administrative privileges on the host you will use to run the installer.
• Familiarize yourself with the procedure for installing a replicated instance. See the Horizon Installation and Upgrade document. You install a replicated instance as part of this procedure.

You do not need to make any changes to the configuration of existing load balancers.

Procedure

1. Verify that an upgraded instance of Connection Server is running and is accessible to the new machine where you plan to install Connection Server.
   When you install Connection Server on the new host, you will point to this existing instance.
2. On the new machine, install a replicated instance of Connection Server.
   The Horizon LDAP on the new instance will replicate that of the upgraded source instance.
3. If applicable, uninstall Connection Server from the old host by using the Windows Add/Remove Programs utility.
4. In Horizon Console, go to Settings > Servers > Connection Servers tab and determine whether the Connection Server instance that was uninstalled still appears in the list.
5. If the uninstalled Connection Server instance still appears in the list, use a vdmadmin command to remove it.
   vdmadmin.exe -S -s server_name -r

   In this example, server_name is the host name or IP address of the Connection Server host. For more information about the vdmadmin command-line tool, see the Horizon Administration document.

Results

A new instance of Connection Server is added to a group and an old instance is removed.

What to do next

Upgrade the other VMware Horizon 8 server components.

If you ever reinstall Connection Server on a server that has a data collector set configured to monitor performance data, stop the data collector set and start it again.

If you are using load balancers to manage access to Connection Servers, update the load balancer configuration to add the newly installed Connection Servers, and remove the decommissioned Connection Servers (if applicable).