Proactive Upgrade Case for VMware Cloud Director

Products

VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Note: The Proactive Upgrade process for VMware Cloud Director is limited to Advanced Support customers with a Support Account Manager (SAM) and/or Dedicated Technical Support Engineer (DTSE).

Prerequisites for opening a Proactive Cloud Director Upgrade Cases:

Cases must be opened 10 business days in advance of the upgrade window.
Cases should be opened as Severity 4.
Collect a multi-cell Cloud Director log bundle and upload to the new case.
Read the target version Release Notes and be aware of Known Issues.
Reference the Interop Matrix to confirm the target Cloud Director version is compatible with other integrations in the environment and plan to upgrade those if necessary. Also confirm the Cloud Director upgrade path is supported.
Have a development environment upgraded before production to test that any customization still functions as expected on the latest version.
If this is a VCF environment, open a proactive Case with VCF Support.
Validate there are good backups of Cloud Director.
Be aware that SHA-1 certificates are not supported at or beyond 10.5.1 and replace those certificates prior to the upgrade if applicable.
Be familiar with Upgrade to VCD 10.6 GA fails installing few RPMs though upgrade is reported as successfu l.

VMware by Broadcom Support will:

Validate the target version and advise if a newer one is available.
Review provided logs for known issues that may impact the upgrade.
If a proactive Case is not raised with sufficient notice of 10 days, it will not be possible to offer log review and pre-check resolution within the planned time-frame.

Please complete the following template when opening the Case:

Upgrade Date & Time:
Cloud Director from version:
Cloud Director to version:
VCF from version:
VCF to version:
2 or more upgrade paths required?

Upgrade Recommendations:

It is recommended to retain locally the Cloud Director logs collected when opening the proactive Case until the upgrade has completed successfully.

Prepare a contingency plan to allow the upgrade maintenance window to be extended should a failure occur.

Schedule a maintenance window for the entire upgrade so that VMs can be powered off to make backups. Make sure there are good backups just prior to the upgrade. A good backup is one that restores have been tested and everything boots as expected. Powered off snapshots can provide a quick rollback point and are also required before starting the upgrade.

Note: The order of Powering Off/On of Nodes is Extremely Important

- Off: Primary, then Standby Nodes
- On: Standby Nodes, then Primary

This is to prevent situations where the Primary WAL file is no longer suitable for the Standbys to join the cluster and lead to READ_ONLY_PRIMARY issues.

If 2 or more upgrade should be performed in line, take the latest snapshots after last upgrade completed.
If an upgrade failure occurs, please request an uplift in case severity.

Resolution

Open an Upgrade Awareness Case via Broadcom Support portal.

The purpose of a proactive upgrade case is to prepare in advance for the Cloud Director upgrade.

This is not an exhaustive health check of the environment. If this is required, please engage VMware by Broadcom Professional Services.

Additional Information

Listed below are other external KB articles created for the proactive upgrade process by product: