vCenter, vSAN and vDS - Will it break

[TheSwitcher]

Hello VMware community!

So I have been working with vSphere and Veeam for a few years now.  I recently was hired to a new organization which utilizes new technologies that I am not really familiar with - vDS and vSAN (VxRail).  Basically, I have been pretty much used to a more simple environment with embedded VCSA and now working with a physical server running vCenter 6.5 update 2 on top of Windows Server 2008r2 sp1.  The virtual environment is backed up by Veeam VMs.

My issue is the lack of patch management for the current severs here...vCenter being one of them.  I purchased a physical host license from Veeam to backup the server and my question is not regarding this.  My question is the availability of vSAN and the vDS during the potential vCenter outages that may happen during the patching of this server.  I have done some research on this I wanted to post this to get some input on this.  Even links to KBs would be appreciated.

I am no stranger to fixing things I break but proprietary equipment (VxRail) with technology I haven't worked with to much (vSAN, vDS) scares me a little.

Thanks

[daphnissov]

You don't have to worry about vSAN or vDS "breaking" if vCenter is unavailable. They continue to run if vCenter itself is down. What is more concerning is the fact that this employer continues to run vCenter not only on Windows (which is a dead end), but on a physical server. First order of business, I think, would be (after ensuring the environment is sufficiently protected) to get them upgraded to vSphere 6.7 (provided support and compatibility is verified from end-to-end) where you can migrate off the physical server to the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA).

[TheSwitcher]

I think this was a product of an upgrade where some engineers did not convey the importance to migrate off of a physical windows server or someone got a little upgrade happy and upgraded the physical server to 6.5.

I do agree with you.  Looking into this, there is a lot of compatibility requirements when doing this process.  Updating VxRail, then vCenter, then all ESXi hosts, then witness host I assume as it is a stretched cluster. 

Frustrating because this was all done around July and we will have to go through a major upgrade again to get the vCenter off of a physical machine.  Sigh...

[ChrisFD2]

If you are upgrading to vCenter 6.7, be mindful that as of the time of this post Veeam doesn't work with Update 1.

KB2784: Consistent backup failures after installing vSphere 6.7 U1

There is a workaround documented above, although I wouldn't personally upgrade in an enterprise environment until patch 4 is released (any time soon). 6.7 build 9451876 would be fine, providing everything in your environment is compatible.

Please check the VMware Compatibility Guide - System Search and the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices before going ahead with any upgrade.

As mentioned above the best method would be to upgrade to the vCenter appliance, it should be relatively straight forward - deploy new appliance VM, transfer settings from existing server, check everything works and then decommission the old server. Ensure you take a full backup before you start.

Good luck and feel free to ask any questions.

[sk84]

As others have mentioned, vDS and vSAN are not affected when you patch your vCenter. They will continue to work even if the vCenter has failed. Only the management functionalities are limited in this case.

However, since you are using VxRails with an external vCenter, the patch management process may be slightly different. I assume you have a VxRail Manager appliance and a VxRail web frontend with automatic upgrade process.

In this case the upgrade must be done in the following steps:

- Update your external vCenter via VAMI (but please check the release notes of the VxRail software what vCenter build numbers are supported for the current VxRail release).

- Update your complete VxRail cluster via the update process in the VxRail Manager web frontend (this includes all server firmware updates, ESXi version, vSAN and vDS).