VCF on VCD: Upgrade to VCF 5
Normally I am not that much into “step by step” upgrades of any kind, but since VCF 5 dropped today, I thought, maybe show how incredibly simple upgrading is.
So first of all, make sure that you see the version within “Release Versions”:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding.png?resize=640%2C276&ssl=1)
Then we can go and download the necessary components, in “Bundle Management”:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-1.png?resize=640%2C151&ssl=1)
There we download all the necessary bundles:
- VMware Cloud Foundation Update 5.0.0.0 – Upgrade bundle
- VMware Cloud Foundation Update 5.0.0.0 – Configuration drift bundle
- VMware Software Update 5.0.0.0 – NSX 4.1.0.2.0
- VMware Software Update 5.0.0.0 – VMware vCenter Server 8.0U1a
- VMware Software Update 5.0.0.0 – VMware ESXi 8.0U1a
Once the bundles have downloaded, we can start the updates. First step is doing a Precheck, to make sure that the WLD is ready to be upgraded:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-2.png?resize=640%2C19&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-3.png?resize=327%2C33&ssl=1)
After this, we can select the correct version to update to:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-4.png?resize=510%2C196&ssl=1)
And start the first update, the update of SDDC Manager:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-5.png?resize=640%2C126&ssl=1)
It will show an informational page, during the upgrade:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-6.png?resize=640%2C133&ssl=1)
(with additional details to be found when clicking “View Update Activity”):
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-7.png?resize=640%2C320&ssl=1)
And after it has finished updating, we have an SDDC Manager on 5.0:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-9.png?resize=215%2C91&ssl=1)
Next step is to apply the drift bundle:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-8.png?resize=640%2C106&ssl=1)
We can also see what the status is of the complete Upgrade path by clicking on “View Bundles”:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-11.png?resize=437%2C226&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-10.png?resize=640%2C438&ssl=1)
Then the NSX upgrade:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-13.png?resize=640%2C101&ssl=1)
Which will ask a few questions, depending on the environment (for my environment they are not that difficult to answer, I still have to do some networking stuff in there :)):
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-14.png?resize=640%2C486&ssl=1)
It does take some time, but in my environment, after roughly 4 hours, the update is completed:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-15.png?resize=640%2C35&ssl=1)
And the NSX environment is upgraded to version 4:
Next up: vCenter Server:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-16.png?resize=640%2C116&ssl=1)
Again a couple of fields to fill out, like a temporary IP-address for the appliance, during the upgrade, but not a very difficult upgrade.
After that has finished:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-17.png?resize=640%2C276&ssl=1)
The next step is to do the upgrade to the hosts:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-18.png?resize=640%2C107&ssl=1)
Again, a few questions to answer (or leave default):
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-19.png?resize=640%2C486&ssl=1)
and away we go!
But pretty soon it fails:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-20.png?resize=640%2C162&ssl=1)
I did notice that the NSX Managers had a service that was not started “Monitoring” (and also that they were very heavily using resources for CPU and Memory). I restarted each of the appliances and after they were restarted, the service was started (but the resource usage was still very high).
I retried the upgrade and this time it passed the NSX LCP part. And after roughly 22 minutes, the host completed:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/afbeelding-21.png?resize=640%2C311&ssl=1)
After this, the other hosts were upgraded, but I received a failure at the third host. There I got the message:
Manual intervention needed as upgrade failed during install stage. Check for errors in the lcm log files located on SDDC Manager under /var/log/vmware/vcf/lcm. Please retry the upgrade once the upgrade is available again.
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image.png?resize=603%2C160&ssl=1)
I tried to find the errors in the logs, but wasn’t able to find those easily. What I did find was that the installation of ESXi 8.0 had concluded and the host was healthy in the cluster. Before trying anything else and going with a comb through the logging, I tried to put the host in maintenance mode and do a reboot, and after that was done, the installation continued automatically and finished succesfully, for this host. The last host in the cluster then does the same. This time the method I tried before, did not work. What I did was reset the previous host from “ERROR” state to “ACTIVE” state, by using this blog: https://www.vsam.pro/sddc-manager-doesnt-want-to-start-or-retry-an-update-vcf-3-10/ (note, this is NOT SUPPORTED) and rebooted the appliance.
After that, the upgrade of the hosts completes successfully:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-1.png?resize=640%2C188&ssl=1)
Final activity that is left is applying the Configuration Updates:
![](https://i0.wp.com/my-sddc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-2.png?resize=640%2C89&ssl=1)
Clicking “Apply All” and see it finish in a few seconds and then it’s all done.
All in all, it took a little under a week (but I didn’t have a lot of time available during the workweek :)).