vSAN/vSphere upgrade from 6 - 6U1

[mythumbsclick]

Hi

I recently invested in vSAN and have a 3 node cluster running on Dell R720xd's (vSphere Essentials with no DRS). I would like to upgrade vSphere to 6 update 1 and want to make sure I don’t break anything as vCenter and Update Manager are both running in the vSAN cluster. My current plan is:

1. Upgrade VCSA
2. vMotion all VMs off Host 1
3. Put host 1 into maintenance mode (Ensure accessibility mode)
4. Remediate host 1 - Reboot
5. Take host 1 out of maintenance mode
6. Move original host 1 VMs back to host 1
7. vMotion all VMs off Host 2
8. Put host 2 into maintenance mode (Ensure accessibility mode)

     and so on

Will this do the job and make sure nothing bad happens to vSAN and be the least amount of hassle? Will vSAN automatically be on 6.1 once the final host is upgraded? I am more than happy to have complete downtime and power all VMs down if it minimises the risk of another host going down whilst host 1 is in maintenance mode but obviously only plan to have each host in maintenance mode for the duration of the updates and no longer.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[zdickinson · Accepted solution]

I think you have it right.  I probably would not power all the VMs off during the upgrade, I would do that rolling upgrade as you outlined.

As far as I know you will be on vSAN 6.1 with the host upgrade.  There is however and upgrade to the file system.  It should be a few click in the Web UI.

From the release notes, VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 Release Notes:  New on-disk format. Virtual SAN 6.1 supports upgrades to new on-disk virtual file format 2.0 through the vSphere Web Client. This log-based file system, based on Virsto technology, provides highly scalable snapshot and clone management support per Virtual SAN cluster.

Thank you, Zach.

[mythumbsclick]

Upgrade went very smoothly with no issues. Thanks for confirming the correct method!