vSphere 7 Upgrade Best Practices
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vSphere 7 Upgrade Best Practices

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Article ID: 315278

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides important documentation and upgrade information that must be reviewed before upgrading to vSphere 7.0.


Resolution

Upgrade Considerations while Upgrading to vSphere 7:

Caution:

  • Review Important information before upgrading to vSphere 7.0
  • If your environment is distributed across multiple machines, the upgrades must be done sequentially, not concurrently.
  • Upgrades to vSphere 7.0 are only possible from vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7
  • In vSphere 7.0, vCenter Server will not support managing the following.
    • ESXi hosts running vSphere 6.0 or lower   
    • Distributed Virtual Switches running on version 6.0 or lower
    • Host profiles based off an ESXi host running vSphere 6.0 or lower
    • In vSphere 7.0, vCenter Server for Windows has been removed and support is not available. 
    • In vSphere 7.0, External Platform Services Controllers are removed. 
  • In vSphere 7.0, TLS 1.2 is enabled by default. TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are disabled by default.
  • In vSphere 7.0, the Flash-based vSphere Web Client has been deprecated and is no longer available.
  • If the vCenter is currently participating in vCenter High Availability (VCHA), it must meet the prerequisites outlined in Prerequisites for Upgrading vCenter Server High Availability Environments before upgrading. Alternatively, it can be disabled first and re-enabled after the upgrade.

ESXi 7 Upgrade Best Practices:

vCenter Server 7 Upgrade Best Practices:

  • Review the Update sequence for vSphere 7.0 and its compatible VMware products to plan the proper order of your vSphere solutions
  • Review the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices to ensure other solutions will support your upgrade path.
  • Ensure all DNS forward/reverse resolution is successful between the Platform Services Controllers, vCenter Servers, ESXi hosts and the virtual machines involved in your upgrade.
  • Ensure that NTP is configured correctly across all nodes involved in your vSphere upgrade.
  • Before upgrading, powered-off concurrent snapshots are recommended for all vCenter Servers and Platform Services Controllers within the Single Sign-On domain to prevent replication sync issues
    • If a rollback to snapshot is necessary, all PSC and vCenter Servers should be reverted to the previous state.
  • When upgrading vCenter Server Appliance from 6.7 U2c or 6.7 U3 to vCenter Server 7.0, you must disable TSO (TCP Segmentation Offload) and GSO (Generic Segmentation Offload) on the appliance Ethernet Adapter Configuration first .  
  • If you are upgrading from an external PSC deployment, extra steps need to be taken after the upgrade completes:
  • If you are upgrading from a load balanced PSC deployment, please see Upgrading to vCenter 7.0 from vCenter 6.x with Load Balanced PSCs (78446)
  • When upgrading several vCenter Servers with external Platform Services Controllers, replication partnerships are specified between the newly embedded vCenters during the upgrade configuration. These agreements should be from a consecutive ring topology. In the case of 3 or more vCenter Servers, the very last agreement is created between the first and last updated vCenter with the vdcrepadmin createagreement command.
/usr/lib/vmware-vmdir/bin/vdcrepadmin -f createagreement -2 -h <FIRST_UPGRADED_VC> -H <LAST_UPGRADED_VC> -u administrator
 

Important Information about vSphere 7.0

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Workaround:
VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics for vSphere - FAQ