upgrade procedure for 7.2 to 7.3.1 with DB change

[FreddyFredFred]

I'm currently running vRO 7.2 with an external MSSQL DB and am looking at upgrading to 7.3.1 and bringing the DB back into the appliance since per the docs, external DB support will be going away eventually so might as well get it over with.

Not sure what the best way to proceed it though so I have a couple ideas. Would appreciate any comments/suggestions so I don't break everything:

1) Export all workflows/actions from old appliance.

2) Deploy a new 7.3.1 appliance at temporary IP address

3) Reconfigure all settings/reimport all workflows/actions to new vro (do not register as vcenter extension though)

4) Test new appliance

5) On old vRO, run workflow to remove vro as extension

6) Go to https://IP_of_new_vro:5480 and change IP address

7) Run workflow to register extension with vcenter

There's little to no use of workflows exposed in the vcenter menus (extension) so I can live without the extension for a day or two

Can I have two different vRO pointing to the same vcenter? This would be ideal as I can continue to use old appliance while working on any issues discovered with new appliance.

My other option is to snapshot existing appliance and try to update it:

1) Snapshot appliance

2) Update

3) Make sure everything still works

4) Export all workflows/actions

5) Change DB to PostgreSQL

6) Import all workflows/actions

A couple issues with this though:

What is the password for the built-in DB since there's a field for it when changing DB providers?

If I need to roll back, will the registered extension be a problem when the version changes?

Per the docs I need at least 3GB of free space on the root partition. From the outlook below, I'm not sure if I meet that requirement:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda1       4.5G  2.6G  1.7G  60% /

udev            3.0G   96K  3.0G   1% /dev

tmpfs           3.0G   16K  3.0G   1% /dev/shm

/dev/sdb1       3.0G  355M  2.5G  13% /storage/log

/dev/sdb2       2.0G  168M  1.8G   9% /storage/db

Thanks

[daphnissov]

I would just go ahead and deploy a new vRO 7.3.1 using an internal postgres database. Yes, you can have two separate vRO instances configured to talk to separate vCenters, just don't try and register the second one as an extension. I also wouldn't change the IP of the newly-deployed vRO instance either. Ensure you have proper DNS resolution and just use a new name.

[iiliev]

Yes, you can have multiple vRO instances configured with the same vCenter. For embedded DB password, try vmware. For old registered vCenter extensions, you can delete them via vCenter MOB.

In the Upgrading and Migrating vRO documentation - https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Orchestrator/7.3/com.vmware.vrealize.orchestrator-upgrade-migrat...  there is a section about how to migrate the external Orchestrator database to the embedded one in vRealize Automation. I think the command provided there should work also for migrating to the embedded DB in vRO (but make snapshots before trying it in case something go wrong) .