Plan and design your upgrade to be fail-safe. Before you attempt to upgrade Virtual SAN, verify that your environment meets the vSphere hardware and software requirements.
Upgrade Prerequisite
Consider the aspects that could delay the overall upgrade process. For guidelines and best practices, see the vSphere Upgrade documentation.
| Upgrade Prerequisites | Description |
|---|---|
| Software, hardware, drivers, firmware, and storage I/O controllers | Verify that the software and hardware components, drivers, firmware, and storage I/O controllers that you plan on using are supported by Virtual SAN for 6.6 and later, and are listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide Web site at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php. |
| Virtual SAN version | Verify that you are using the latest version of Virtual SAN. If you are currently running a beta version and plan on upgrading Virtual SAN to 6.6, your upgrade will fail. When you upgrade from a beta version, you must perform a fresh deployment of Virtual SAN. |
| Disk space | Verify that you have enough space available to complete the software version upgrade. The amount of disk storage needed for the vCenter Server installation depends on your vCenter Server configuration. For guidelines about the disk space required for upgrading vSphere, see the vSphere Upgrade documentation. |
| Virtual SAN disk format | Verify that you have enough capacity available to upgrade the disk format. If you do not have free space equal to the consumed capacity of the largest disk group, with the space available on disk groups other than the disk groups that are being converted, you must choose Allow reduced redundancy as the data migration option. For example, the largest disk group in a cluster has 10 TB of physical capacity, but only 5 TB is being consumed. An additional 5 TB of spare capacity will be needed elsewhere in the cluster, excluding the disk groups that are being migrated. When upgrading the Virtual SAN disk format, verify that the hosts are not in maintenance mode. When any member host of a Virtual SAN cluster enters maintenance mode, the cluster capacity is automatically reduced, because the member host no longer contributes storage to the cluster and the capacity on the host is unavailable for data. For information about various evacuation modes, see the Place a Member of Virtual SAN Cluster in Maintenance Mode. |
| Virtual SAN hosts | Verify that you have placed the Virtual SAN hosts in maintenance mode and selected the Ensure data accessibility or Evacuate all data option. However, when you use vSphere Update Manager to upgrade Virtual SAN, the default evacuation mode is Ensure data accessibility. When you use the Ensure data accessibility mode, your data is not completely protected, and if you encounter a failure while upgrading Virtual SAN, you might experience unexpected data loss. However, the Ensure data accessibility mode is faster than the Evacuate all data mode, because you do not need to move all data to another host in the cluster. For information about various evacuation modes, see the Place a Member of Virtual SAN Cluster in Maintenance Mode. |
| Virtual Machines | Verify that you have backed up your virtual machines. |
Recommendations
- If ESXi hosts are configured with memory capacity of 512 GB or less, use SATADOM, SD, USB, or hard disk devices as the installation media.
- If ESXi hosts are configured with memory capacity greater than 512 GB, use a separate magnetic disk or flash device as the installation device. If you are using a separate device, verify that Virtual SAN is not claiming the device.
- When you boot a Virtual SAN host from a SATADOM device, you must use a single-level cell (SLC) device and the size of the boot device must be at least 16 GB.
Virtual SAN 6.5 and later enables you to adjust the boot size requirements for an ESXI host in a Virtual SAN cluster. For more information, see the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2147881.
Upgrading the Witness Host in a Two Host or Stretched Cluster
The witness host for a two host cluster or stretched cluster is located outside of the Virtual SAN cluster, but it is managed by the same vCenter Server. You can use the same process to upgrade the witness host as you use for a Virtual SAN data host.
Do not upgrade the witness host until all data hosts have been upgraded and have exited maintenance mode.
Using vSphere Update Manager to upgrade hosts in parallel can result in the witness host being upgraded in parallel with one of the data hosts. To avoid upgrade problems, configure vSphere Update Manager so it does not upgrade the witness host in parallel with the data hosts.
