Upgrade Path and Replacing Remote Collectors with Cloud Proxies in Aria Operations 8.6.3 to 8.18.5

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

This article outlines the required multi-step upgrade path for VMware Aria Operations from version 8.6.3 to 8.18.5. This workflow necessitates the deprecation and removal of legacy Remote Collector (RC) nodes and their replacement with Cloud Proxy (CP) nodes to align with architectural requirements without causing metric polling interruptions or data loss.

Environment

8.x

8.18.x

Cause

VMware Aria Operations versions 8.18.x and later require Cloud Proxies for distributed data collection. Legacy Remote Collectors are deprecated and must be replaced during the upgrade sequence to ensure compatibility. Maintaining legacy Remote Collectors during an upgrade to version 8.18.5 will result in unsupported configurations and potential upgrade failures.

Resolution

Execute the following sequenced action plan to upgrade the cluster and replace the nodes:

1. Prerequisite: Power off the nodes and take offline snapshots of the entire Aria Operations cluster (Primary, Replica, Data nodes, and RCs) following the exact instructions in Broadcom KB 342576
   
   
2. Upgrade Phase 1 (8.6.3 to 8.12.1): Execute the upgrade from Aria Operations 8.6.3 to 8.12.1. Do not modify or delete the Remote Collector nodes during this phase.
   
   
3. Pre-Phase 2 Node Preparation: Before upgrading past 8.12.1, reassign all active adapters currently using the RC nodes to the "Default Collector group". This ensures continuous API execution and metric polling from endpoints during the transition.
   
   
4. RC Deprecation: Delete the legacy Remote Collector nodes from the cluster.
   
   
5. Upgrade Phase 2 (8.12.1 to 8.17.2): Execute the upgrade from Aria Operations 8.12.1 to 8.17.2.
   
   
6. Upgrade Phase 3 (8.17.2 to 8.18.5): Execute the final upgrade to Aria Operations 8.18.5.
   
   
7. Cloud Proxy Deployment: Deploy the new Cloud Proxy (CP) virtual appliances into the environment and connect them to the upgraded cluster.
   
   
8. Verification: Navigate to Data Sources > Cloud Proxies in the Aria Operations UI to verify the new CP nodes are online and collecting metrics.

Additional Information

Reassigning the adapters to the Default Collector group prevents data collection outages while the legacy RCs are destroyed. Deleting the RCs prior to the 8.17.2/8.18.5 upgrades removes legacy dependencies, allowing the cluster to upgrade successfully before the modern Cloud Proxy architecture is introduced.

Procedure to Replace Remote Collector / Redeploy Cloud Proxy