Aria Operations for Network 6.x best practices on upgrading

Products

VMware Aria Operations for Networks

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide information that will assist with the upgrade of Aria Operations for Networks. It includes general information relating to the upgrade process, and supplemental information based on common issues and the latest support trends.

Environment

Aria Operations for Networks

Cause

This article is meant to assist you with the offline upgrade for Aria Operations for Networks

Resolution

Prerequisites

Before upgrading Aria Operations for Networks, make sure that snapshots have been taken on both Aria Operations for Networks Platform and Collector VMs to revert back the deployment to a working stable state.
Ensure Aria Operations for Networks VMs are powered off from vCenter using Power Option>Shut Down Guest OS and then take snapshots.

For clustered environments, please follow this KB for proper shutdown procedures Best practices to shutdown Aria Operations for Networks Clustered deployments

Post upgrade is Successful ensure to delete the snapshots.

Upgrade paths

Standard path
6.10.0 > 6.11.0 > 6.12.0 > 6.13.0 > 6.14.0

Jumps possible

6.8.0>6.10.0
6.9.0>6.11.0
6.10.0>6.12.0
6.11.0>6.13.0
6.12.0>6.14.0

Health checks to ensure a smooth upgrade

We recommend to have 100% resource reservation. Please make sure reservation is set to 100% before the upgrade.
Check the disk I/O speed (by doing a DD command)and make sure there is no latency beyond 20ms. Both steps will reduce overall time for upgrade
Check the MD5SUM of the downloaded upgrade bundle and match with Customer Connect site.
Increase the UI timeout to more than 1 hour. This will ensure seamless UI upgrade
- Settings > System Configuration > User Session Timeout > Duration 24h.

Upgrade methods :

A. Online upgrade : This feature has been deprecated and is no longer available.

B. Offline Upgrade

You must upgrade Platform VMs before Proxy VMs.

In case of Cluster Upgrade, platform1 must be upgraded first, then the other platforms will upgrade automatically. To confirm platform1 IP address, run this command in CLI: (cli)ping platform1

Download the upgrade bundle file VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle
Copy the upgrade bundle VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle to Aria Operations for Networks Platform and Proxy VMs.

To copy the file to Aria Operations for Networks VM, use any one of these options:

Option 0 (The quickest way to upgrade) :
1. Go to Settings > Install and Support > Software Version > Click on "Click here" next to "Want to update using an update package" to upload the bundle to the appliances.
2. Click on "Browse" and on "Upload" to start the transfer.
3. Once the upload has been completed, when you are ready, click on "Install Now" to perform the upgrade.

Option 1:

- To copy the file from Linux VM to Aria Operations for Networks VM, run this command:
  
  scp VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle consoleuser@<IP_Address_vRNI_VM>:~/
- To copy file from Windows VM to Aria Operations for Networks VM, run this command:
  
  Use pscp utility from Putty Latest Download
  
  pscp -scp <SOURCE_PATH>\VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle consoleuser@<IP_Address_vRNI_VM>:~/

Option 2:

Log in to Aria Operations for Networks Platform CLI using consoleuser and run this command:

(cli) package-installer copy --host 1<HOST IP> --user <USER> --path /path/to/VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle
Note: This command uses SCP to download the bundle from the host where the patch is downloaded, thus SCP server is required to be running on the host.
For more information, see Aria Operations for Networks Command-Line Interface Reference Guide.

Upgrade the appliance using package-installer upgrade command.

(cli) package-installer upgrade --name VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Networks.<BUILD VERSION>.upgrade.bundle

Note: Upgrade would complete within 30 minutes after this step.
Verify the upgraded version using the show-version command.

(cli) show-version

Note: After a successful upgrade, it is not required to reboot the virtual machine.

Additional Information

For any clarifications and issue troubleshooting, contact Broadcom Support