Upgrade VCF Operations for Network From GUI

Products

VCF Operations for Networks

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide information that will assist with the upgrade of VCF Operations for Networks using GUI and outside of product Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager.

This methods is to avoid a known issue with Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager where snapshot logic is broken when upgrade is triggered via this product for VCF Operations for Network.

Symptoms observed if Lifecycle Manager is used include "Upgrade pre-check failed, with errors such as "Error occurred while checking upgrade pre-check status" featuring "High disk utilization".

This knowledge base article includes general information and prerequisites relating to the upgrade process, and supplemental information to avoid the common issues during upgrade of VCF Operations for Network.

NOTE: VCF Operations for Networks was formerly named Aria Operations for Networks (AON), and prior to that was named vRealize Network Insight (vRNI).

Environment

VCF Operations for Networks

Cause

This article is meant to assist you with the Single Click Offline upgrade method for VCF Operations for Networks.

Resolution

For a smooth and successfully upgrade, kindly follow below:

Prerequisites

Before upgrading VCF Operations for Networks, make sure that snapshots have been taken on both VCF Operations for Networks Platform and Collector VMs to revert back the deployment to a working stable state in the event of a problem during the upgrade.

For VCF Operations for Networks Simple deployments with 1 Platform and 1 collector node or 1 Platform and more than 1 Collector node follow below:

Ensure all services are running and healthy on the Nodes in VCF Operations for Networks deployment. i.e. ( All platform and Collector).To validate this, see step 2.
Take a SSH/putty session on platform node , login with username support and execute below commands:
```
ub
uptime
./check-service-health.sh -p -d
df -h 
```
On VCF Operations for Networks GUI , Navigate to Settings>Infrastructure and support>Infrastructure and updates pages to validate all is showing in green for System Health, System Infrastructure, Platform and collector Table should not show any alerts or errors.
If no issues are seen then, ensure you take cold snapshots for all the nodes by Manually shutting down the Collector node(s) first and then platform Node.
Ensure you use vCenter Power Option>Shutdown guest OS for a graceful shutdown.
Take snapshots from vCenter for all the nodes (Platform and collectors) in your deployment.
Ensure you have also followed the prerequisites as mentioned in public facing documentation: Single-Click Offline Upgrade

2. For clustered environments (3/5/7/10 and 15 node platform cluster)

Follow the steps mentioned, see Step 1 a to c only. Steps d to g are not simple deployments and not for Clustered deployments.
Please follow this KB for proper shutdown procedures Best practices to shutdown Aria Operations for Networks Clustered deployments

Supported version Upgrade paths:

Standard path: 6.12.0 /6.12.1 > 6.13.0 > 6.14.0

See the Jumps as below

6.12.0/6.12.1 > 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 from the Broadcom portal download site.
Increase the UI timeout to more than 1 hour. This will ensure seamless UI upgrade
- Settings > System Configuration > User Session Timeout > Duration 24h.

Other Upgrade methods such as below now not available

1. Online upgrade : This feature Is deprecated and is no longer available.

2. Single click Offline Upgrade( via Aria Operations for Networks GUI.

After confirming that the upgrade is successful, execute step 1 and 2 mentioned above and validate.

If all is as expected, then delete (consolidate) the cold snapshots from all the appliances.

It is not recommended to run VCF Operations for Networks appliances on snapshots post 24 hours of upgrade in order to avoid performance lag issues and excess disk space consumption in the VMFS datastore(s) where the virtual disk(s) are located.

Additional Information

If you have advanced Support with a Support Account Manager (SAM) and/or Dedicated Technical Support Engineer (DTSE) you are eligible for a proactive upgrade case. Please see Proactive Upgrade Case for VCF environments for further details.