You must first upgrade NSX Tools and then PCG.

Prerequisites

  • Outbound port 8080 must be open on workload VMs that need to be upgraded.
  • The PCGs must be powered on when the upgrade of NSX Tools installed on workload VMs or of PCGs is in progress.

Procedure

  1. Log in to CSM with the Enterprise Administrator role.
  2. Click Utilities > Upgrade > Begin Upgrade. The Upgrade CSM wizard starts.
    Note: Although the name of the wizard is Upgrade CSM, you can only upgrade NSX Tools and PCG from this wizard.
  3. In the Upgrade CSM > Overview screen, you can see an overview of the default upgrade plan. Based on the upgrade bundle you have uploaded, you can see which versions of NSX Tools and PCG are compatible for an upgrade via the upgrade bundle uploaded.
  4. Click Next. The CSM > Select NSX Tools screen appears.
    A list of all compatible NSX Tools that can be upgraded to the target version in all your VPCs or VNets, are displayed. You can filter NSX Tools based on which private cloud network they are in or which OS they are deployed on. All NSX-managed VMs are eligible for upgrade and listed for you to select. Fix any errors on NSX-managed VMs which are quarantined before selecting them for upgrade to prevent the upgrade of NSX Tools on such VMs from failing.
  5. Select the NSX Tools you want to upgrade and move them to the Selected window.
    Note: When upgrading from 3.0.x or 3.1.x to 3.2.0 and later, make sure you first upgrade NSX Tools and then PCG. You might notice inter-VPC traffic loss on the VMs where PCG is upgraded to 3.2.0 or later but the NSX Tools are still not upgraded to 3.2.0 or later.
  6. Click Next. CSM downloads the upgrade bits to the PCG on which the NSX Tools reside. The PCG copies these upgrade bits to the VMs which have been selected for upgrade.

    If you have an HA pair of PCG, CSM downloads the upgrade bits to each PCG and starts upgrading the selected NSX Tools. NSX Tools in the same VPC/VNet are upgraded in parallel. Ten NSX Tools under a VPC/VNet are upgraded simultaneously.

    If you have more than ten NSX Tools, they are queued for upgrading. PCG maintains a flag on VMs that are unreachable and attempts to upgrade them when they can be reached. For example, a powered off workload VM is upgraded when powered on again and able to communicate with PCG. Similarly for a workload VM on which port 8080 is blocked at first but when port 8080 is opened and PCG can access it, the upgrade for that workload VM proceeds. If some NSX Tools are not able to be upgraded, you can skip upgrading them in order to proceed. See Skip Upgrading NSX Tools for details on this option.If you run into problems while upgrading NSX Tools, refer to these troubleshooting instructions: Troubleshooting NSX Tools Upgrade on Windows Workload VMs and Troubleshooting NSX Tools Upgrade on Linux Workload VMs.

  7. Click Next to proceed with upgrading the PCG. With an HA pair of PCGs, there are two fail-overs during the upgrade process and when the upgrade finishes, the preferred PCG is reinstated as the active gateway.
  8. Click Finish.

Results

PCGs and NSX Tools are upgraded.
Note: If you are upgrading from NSX-T Data Center 2.x to NSX-T Data Center 3.x and you have service insertion set up in version 2.x, you must create a lowest priority default catch-all rule with the action set to Do Not Redirect. Follow instructions described in "Set Up Redirection Rules" in the NSX-T Data Center Administration Guide.
How long does the upgrade process take
Note: CSM and NSX-T Data Center components are upgraded separately, and that time is not included here. This is an estimation to help you plan your upgrade cycles.
  • One or an HA pair of PCGs: PCGs in different VPCs or VNets are upgraded in parallel, but PCGs in HA pair upgrade serially. It takes about 20 minutes for one PCG to upgrade.
  • One VPC or VNet: For a VPC or VNet with up to 10 VMs and an HA pair of PCGs, it can take up to 45 minutes to upgrade. This time may vary depending on the OS on the VMs and their size.
  • NSX Tools installed on a workload VM: It takes from 3 to 5 minutes for each NSX Tools installation on a VM to upgrade, not accounting for the time it takes to upload the upgrade bundle from CSM to the public cloud. 10 VMs with NSX Tools installed are upgraded simultaneously. For multiple compute VPCs/VNets per Transit VPC/VNet, all VMs with NSX Tools installed on one Compute VPC/VNet are first upgraded before proceeding to the next. The time to upgrade NSX Tools also varies for different operating systems and the VM size.

What to do next

Follow the next step in the checklist that applies to the version you are upgrading from: Upgrading NSX Cloud Components.