There are three stages in the upgrade process of vRealize Automation within vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.

Stages of Upgrade Description

Preparation

 The preparation phase verifies that the system is healthy and shuts down services to make sure that all data is persisted.
Snapshot creation Snapshots are taken for an automated, faster recovery of failures. vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager then shuts down the VMs, takes a snapshot, turns power on, and continues to the next phase.
Upgrade The upgrade utility is run.
For certain failure events, the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager upgrade workflow provides options to either finish the upgrade successfully or revert to the stage before upgrade.
  • The upgrade process starts with a status check task that verifies the current state of the VA. If the system already has an upgrade request due to a previous upgrade attempt, then vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager provides an option to clean the older states and start a new upgrade. You can see the status task failing with a retry parameter similar to a cancelAndStartAfresh statement. Setting this retry parameter to true cleans up older states and restarts the upgrade.
  • If failures occur during the preparation phase, you can cancel the upgrade process. If a failure cannot be corrected, or if the failure is fixed manually outside of the upgrade tool, you can proceed to the next phase in the upgrade workflow. The status provided after a preparation phase failure provides two retry parameter options. If you set the cancelAndStartAfresh option to true, the upgrade process is cancelled and the system reverts to its pre-upgrade state. If you set the proceedNext option to true, the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager upgrade proceeds to the next stage.
  • The upgrade workflow consists of VM operations such as reverting or deleting a snapshot and VM shutdown, power ON, and so on. If a failure occurs, a Skip option can be used if the retry option in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager does not help and when you manually perform the same operation directly in vCenter.
  • The final phase of the upgrade can be successful, can succeed with warnings, or can fail.
    • Success with warnings indicates that the upgrade has completed successfully, but a minor error is detected. You can check the errors and rectify them. You can set the succeedUpgradeRequest retry parameter to true to complete the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager upgrade workflow.
    • If upgrade fails, you can decide if you want to revert the snapshot and retry the upgrade or cancel the whole upgrade process. You can revert and delete the snapshot, cancel the current upgrade request, and move the system to a state before the upgrade started.
      • For an upgrade failure, you can see the status task after the upgrade failure with retry parameters similar to revertSnapshotNRetryUpgrade and cancelUpgradeNRevertBack. If you set revertSnapshotNRetryUpgrade to true, the upgrade utility revert the snapshot and you can retry the upgrade.
      • If you set cancelUpgradeNRevertBack to true, you can cancel the upgrade process, which can revert and delete the snapshot, cancel the current upgrade request, and move the system to a pre-upgrade state.
Note:
  • The vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager upgrade workflow does not support removing snapshots if there is a successful upgrade. You can keep the snapshots or remove them manually from the vCenter.
  • If you cancel the upgrade process after a post preparation or upgrade phase failure, the upgrade workflow from vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is stopped. In such situations, restart the upgrade process by using options on the Manager Environment page.
  • You can enable the multi-tenancy for vRealize Automation, refer to Tenant management in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.
  • If the vRealize Automation upgrade fails, you must cancel upgrade or revert a snapshot, and then retry to upgrade through vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. If you revert the snapshot manually in a vCenter, vRealize Automation goes into an inconsistent state.
  • For vRealize Automation, if you cancel upgrade or revert a snapshot, and then retry upgrade, ensure that you create a support bundle that contains the log files for any future analysis and reference.