Upgrade vDS from 5.5 to 6.5.

[ToreUthus]

Hi.

We're just about to upgrade the vDS from 5.5. to 6.5.

Every search for this seems to me that this is a "no brainer" to do.

Just a short "interupt" sometimes (I've read).

My boss wants me to check thoroughly is there is any chance at all if an vDS upgrade can result of loss off the entire vDS?

Has anyone experienced this?

Is there any chance the vDS could be corrupted so the vDS goes entirely down?

Just wonder if any at all have had some bad experience with this.

Regards

Tore

[SupreetK · Accepted solution]

Generally, it should go smooth. However, take a config backup of the vDS. In case something goes wrong, you can create a new one and restore/import the config.

Cheers,

Supreet

[ToreUthus]

But if the vDS goes down.

Wouldn't it be implossible to restore vDS then?

Haven't we lost all network access then?

[SupreetK]

Personally, I have never seen a vDS going down. It has two planes, control plane and data plane. Control plane resides on the vCenter and Data plane resides on the ESXi host. AFAIK, should something happen to the data plane (vDS DB), the hosts management network has to be migrated to a standard switch from DCUI ESXi shell and once the hosts is connected to the vCenter, vDS config can be restored from the backup.

Cheers,

Supreet

[nileshm]

As an extra precaution you can move all your hosts to standard switch and then perform vds upgrade. After that move yours hosts to vds. Before migrating hosts to standard switch make sure you have an uplink and vlans/networks configured on it. If you have multiple physical nics connected to vds, move one nic to standard switch temporary so that you have an uplink. You can simply write a script to configure networks/vlans on standard switch as they are on vds. After successful migration of hosts to vds, move the physical nic back to vds. Thanks, Nilesh

[ToreUthus]

Did the upgrade today.

2 seconds and done.

No packet drop observed.

[nileshm]

That's a good news!! cheers!!