Cannot upgrade VCF operations from 9.0.x to 9.0.2.0 or later

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• Do not have the option to select the vCenter from vCenter server list when initiating upgrade of VCF operations 9.x to a later version
• vCenter version is 8.x
• SDDC manager is on 5.x

Environment

VCF Operations 9.x

SDDC manager 5.x

vCenter 8.x

Resolution

Note: It is recommended to upgrade SDDC manager and vCenter to 9.x version.  If however this is not possible and you wish to upgrade VCF operations to the latest version you can try the below steps to add vCenter 8.x to the deployment. Before applying the steps below take a snapshot of Fleet Management as per KB How to create a snapshot for VCF Operations Fleet Manager appliance

1. Enable Fleet Management UI access: 

   touch /var/lib/vrlcm/UI_ENABLED

2. Open Fleet Management API as per KB How to Authorize VCF Operations Fleet Management API
3.  Expand the section Data Center Controller → Click on GET /lcm/lcops/api/v2/datacenters → copy the dataCenterVmid value to notepad
4. Export the vCenter certificate as per KB Export the vCenter certificates in .pem format to import into the Aria products 
5. Expand the section Data Center Controller → Click on POST /lcm/lcops/api/datacenters/{dataCentervmid}/vcenters → For vCenterRequestDTO fill in the details based on your configuration.  Example below:

   {
   "vCenterHost": "<vCenterFQDN>",
   "vCenterName": "<vCentershortname>",
   "vcCertificate": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n<EntervCenter Server Certificate in one line>/n-----END CERTIFICATE-----
   "vcPassword": "locker: password:<lockerpassword>: <vCenteralias>",
   "vcUsedAs": "MANAGEMENT",
   "vcUsername": "[email protected]"
   }

6. Repeat step 3 and 4 to add all vCenters that host the VCF operations nodes including Cloud Proxies. 
7. Upgrade VCF operations using Fleet Management. 
8. Disable Fleet Management UI: 

   rm /var/lib/vrlcm/UI_ENABLED

Additional Information

Lifecycle Management of VCF Management Components