Staged NSX Host Upgrades

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article addresses the operational question of whether ESXi Transport Node upgrades must be completed simultaneously or if the process can be staged, upgrading a partial group of hosts now and deferring the remaining hosts to a subsequent maintenance window.

Environment

VMware NSX-T 3.X
VMware NSX 4.X

Resolution

Yes, staging the ESXi Transport Node upgrade is supported and is a common practice.

The Upgrade Coordinator feature in the NSX Manager UI is designed to manage the host upgrade process in a flexible manner. Administrators can utilize the concepts of Upgrade Unit Groups to achieve a staged upgrade:

1. Host Upgrade Unit Groups: During the upgrade process, all hosts in ESXi cluster are placed into a single Host Upgrade Unit Group. You can select a subset of these hosts to upgrade immediately.

2. Managing the Groups: You have the ability to explicitly Manage Host Upgrade Unit Groups, allowing you to create smaller, logical groups of hosts.

3. Staging the Upgrade: You can initiate the upgrade for Host Upgrade Unit Groups in the first maintenance window. The remaining hosts will stay on the current NSX version until you manually select them to start the upgrade in a later window.

Additional Information

Upgrading Hosts