Proactive Upgrade Case for Live Recovery (SRM)

Products

VMware Live Recovery VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.x VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.x

Issue/Introduction

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

Prerequisites for opening a Proactive Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Upgrade Case:

Cases must be opened 10 business days in advance of the upgrade window.
Cases should be opened as Severity 4.
Have a development environment upgraded before production to test that any customization still functions as expected on the latest version.
Prerequisites and Best Practices for VMware Live Site Recovery Upgrade must be run in advance and report any issues that cannot be resolved.
Read the target version Release Notes and be aware of Known Issues.
Reference the Interop Matrix to confirm the target SRM version is compatible with other integrations in the environment and plan to upgrade those if necessary. Also confirm the SRM upgrade path is supported.
If this is a VCF environment, open a proactive Case with VCF Support.
Validate there are good backups.
Be familiar with Site Recovery Manager Appliance Upgrade Best Practices
Upgrading to the VMware Live Recovery appliance

VMware by Broadcom Support will:

Ensure pre-check issues are resolved.
Validate the target version and advise if a newer one is available.
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:
SRM from version:
SRM to version:
Production vCenter:

DNS
IP Address
Install vCenter version & build number

Production SRM

DNS
IP Address
Installed SRM version and build number

Production VR Appliance (if applicable)

DNS
IP Address
Installed vSphere Replication version and build number

Production SRA version and build number (if applicable)
Secondary Site vCenter:

DNS
IP Address
Install vCenter version & build number

Secondary Site SRM

DNS
IP Address
Installed SRM version and build number

Secondary Site VR Appliance (if applicable)

DNS
IP Address
Installed vSphere Replication version and build number

Secondary Site SRA version and build number (if applicable)
Have you exported your SRM Configuration?
Have you exported your vSphere Replication configuration?
Have you backed up your vCenter configuration?
Upgrade Prechecks Passed?:
2 or more upgrade paths required?

Upgrade Recommendations:

It is recommended to retain locally the Site Recovery Manager 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.
Have full cold backups of the nodes in case a roll back is necessary if the upgrade is unable to be completed before the maintenance window.
If 2 or more upgrade should be performed in line, take the latest snapshots after last upgrade completed.
If an upgrade failure occurs, please raise new support request

Resolution

Open an Upgrade Awareness Case via Broadcom Support portal.

The purpose of a proactive upgrade case is to prepare in advance for the Site Recovery Manager 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: