How to Upgrade VMware Cloud Director to non-GA version with VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

This Article explains how to upgrade VMware Cloud Director to a non-GA (non-General Availability) version using VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager (VCPLCM)  which normally only supports official GA release

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.x

VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager 

Resolution

The article provides a workaround so you can upgrade to a non-GA release (such as a beta, hotfix, or custom build) by manually preparing the upgrade files for VCPLCM.

The Process Includes:

1.Upload your new OVA/upgrade files to repo directory on VCP LCM appliance as usual. 

2. Now in the same directory create sha256 checksum files for these two files using the same filename with suffix ‘checksum‘. This can be done with these two commands right on the appliance:

sha256sum VMware_Cloud_Director_10.6.0.11554-24142761_update.tar.gz > VMware_Cloud_Director_10.6.0.11554-24142761_update.tar.gz.checksum

sha256sum VMware_Cloud_Director-10.6.0.11554-24142761_OVF10.ova > VMware_Cloud_Director-10.6.0.11554-24142761_OVF10.ova.checksum

Note that this does not guarantee the files are actually correct and not corrupt. If you have the checksum hash available from the source who provided you with the binaries then use that.

3.Now we can proceed with the upgrade. In the target version however we need to specify the long version name that includes both the appliance version and the build number . You will get support warning as this is not release that matches the interop bundle data

4.The rest of the process is as usual (clicking Validate and OK) and you should be able to upgrade your VCD instance within a few minutes.

 

Additional Information

How to Upgrade VMware Cloud Director to non-GA version with VCPLCM