Understanding the VersionAlias.yml file in SDDC Manager

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

This document describes the structure and elements of a VersionAlias.yml file in SDDC Manager, and how to interpret it, and use it for troubleshooting upgrade issues.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.x
VMware Cloud Foundation 3.x

Resolution

In a VCF Environment, for every underlying component, we are generally dealing with 3 versions:

A = The current version of the component in the environment (i.e what should be the version of the component in the SDDC Database)

B = The version reported as bundleElementPreviousVersion in the upgrade bundle manifest, or as the "Required Version" in the Upgrade Bundle details via the SDDC UI

C = The version that the Upgrade Bundle will update the component to, or the "Update to Version" in the Upgrade Bundle details via the SDDC UI






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In the version Alias file:
- The entry in the alias section should be the version A.
- The entry in the base section should be the version B.
- The version C should not be in the file at all.

For example:




To explain this further -> for a particular component, we are running version A.
But, we are wanting to use an upgrade bundle that upgrades version B to version C.
So - using the VersionAlias.yml file, we tell LCM that version A (alias) = version B (base)

This presents the version A as version B to the LCM service, and therefore satisfies one of the requirements of the upgrade bundle to mark it as available.

Workaround:

Updating the version aliases:

We should only ever be updating the version aliases via the API available in SDDC Manager.

For example, if we are wanting to upgrade the environment to VCF 4.4, we can use the following API via the Developer Center of the SDDC Manager UI:

We can also leverage the REST API using curl commands as described in the following KB:
Skip level upgrades are not enabled for product components after VCF is upgraded to 4.3.0.0 / 4.3.1

 

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:

Any updates performed on components outside of SDDC Manager (Out-of-band updates or Hot-Patches) will require additional manual steps to be taken on the SDDC Manager, one of which is updating the versionAlias.yml file to accommodate the updated versions, so that the next VCF upgrade attempt will be successful.

 

NOTE: In general - unless explicitly specified in a KB, or other VMware documentation, out-of-band upgrades for VCF components is unsupported.

 

To be able to upgrade to versions of the VCF components higher than that available in the Bill of Materials, please use the Async Patch Tool (available for VCF 4.2.1 and above)