Qestion on deploying VCHA and upgrading to latest release

[deasyp]

Hi there,

Hoping someone has done this before..  I have a single VCSA appliance (with embedded psc), it's running 6.5 U1b.  I'm keen to get this upgraded to the latest 6.7 release.

I've also been reading into VCHA, and looking to deploying this using the 3-node passive/active topology.

My question is, can I add the additional vCenter appliances with the latest 6.7 release or is there a requirement to keep all appliances at the same version?

As a follow up question, what is the recommended process for upgrading VCSAs when configured in VCHA mode?

If I'm able to install additional 6.7 VCSAs, I assume I can failover the 'active' 6.5 host to the new 6.7 host (by putting into maintenance mode) and then running the upgrade of the 6.5 host ?

Ultimately I'm trying to complete as much, or all, of this as a non-disruptive process to production workloads.

Thanks in advance

[GayathriS]

Hi

As per the document it states that The first instance, initially used as the Active node, is cloned twice to a Passive node and to a Witness node. Together, the three nodes provide an active-passive fail over solution. which concludes that you cannot have a combination of different vcenter version here .

This blogs shows you the architecture .

VMWare VCenter 6.7 VCHA with External Load Balanced PSC Installation Steps – Siva Sankar Blogs

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-67-availability-guide.pdf

Understanding the Impacts of Mixed-Version vCenter Server Deployments - VMware vSphere Blog   :

Understanding the Impacts of Mixed-Version vCenter Server Deployments

Its better that you upgrade your existing vcenter and esxi servers and then have this mode configured.

Please mark this as correct if this answers and helps you .

regards

Gayathri

[deasyp]

Thanks for the feedback Gayathri,

Let me pivot this from another angle.. lets assume I have the VCHA deployed in 6.5, and all hosts are the same version..  what's the best approach for upgrading the cluster ?

Are you still required to take down the entire VCHA cluster, in order to upgrade ? Surely not ?

[daphnissov]

Yes, you must break and destroy vCHA before you upgrade vCenter. Once on 6.7, you reinitialize it. It's really a big deal and requires no downtime.

[GayathriS]

Yes thats correct , you need to have downtime break the VCHA cluster and then red do it.

Please mark this as correct if this answers and helps you .

regards

Gayathri

[deasyp]

Thanks both of you for responding.. but I'll be honest I'm still none the wiser, and not really sure if it's disruptive (or not)..

I'm not trying to be smart or pedantic, I'm just looking to clarify, it looks like some words were omitted when responding..

"​..It's really a big deal.. "

"..you need to have downtime break the VCHA cluster" ..

In my last VCSA upgrade attempt going from 6.0 -> 6.5, despite trying to do all the right things, such as opening advisory support calls in advance, and validating the upgrade route was supported, it failed royally and (of course) the chap on the support side put my call into the 9-5 business hours support queue. So on a Saturday morning, of a bank holiday weekend I was told it would the proceeding tuesday before I would get a response. So you can imagine, once bitten, twice shy..

In essence what we are confirming here is VCHA isn't going to help anyone with performing a vCenter upgrade, when it comes to keeping vCenter services available?

That you must perform the upgrade on a single node, pray the upgrade works and hope support will be on-point on the day .. and only then you can setup VCHA ?

As always many thanks for your time & help

[daphnissov]

Sorry, I realize I omitted a fairly substantial word there:  "not". As in, it's NOT a big deal to break vCHA and upgrade. I'm also sorry you had such a bad experience in your 6.0 to 6.5 upgrades. The majority I hear (and literally all the ones I've done) have gone without incident. That said, it sounds like you took all the precautions yet something still borked. In the future, you need to file these cases with GSS as severity 1 because that's an outage issue. You should not accept to ever wait that long. Hopefully your 6.5 to 6.7 upgrade will be better, HOWEVER my personal recommendation is to hold off until 6.7 U1 comes out which should be this month. This will likely fix even more upgrade issues (typically where most of the troubles occur) and make your experience flawless.

[deasyp]

Thanks daphnissov,..  I would certainly like to try and hold out for 6.7U1, as from what I'd read the HTML5 functionality is much better. 

In regards to the support case, yea it seemed the odds were stacked against me at the time, I had tried getting it raised as a P1 issue, but the support manager (at the time) was clearly keen to get in on making the support experience terrible - I recall spending the weekend arguing the technicalities of what constitutes a P1 severity issue (he didn't think an upgrade constituted a P1) .. the farce of a support experience was fed back to the territory manager for further follow up.