VMware update sequence of vSphere products

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides a list of articles including documentations that should help you better plan your vSphere environment upgrade with minimal downtime and effort.

Resolution

Important: Before upgrading your vSphere environment, VMware strongly recommends to review documentation to ensure that vSphere Upgrade Guide including best practices are followed. 

• VMware vSphere Documentation primarily on the Upgrade Guides
• VMware Product Interoperability Matrices

This table consists and provide more insights to better plan your vSphere upgrade depending on your versions that are running on your environment.

Guidance for Evaluating an upgrade

1. If you need to update multiple products in your environment, start with updating the product with the lowest sequence number.
2. After you update the product, update the product with the next sequence number.
3. If a product is not present in your environment, update the subsequent product.
4. If you need to update two products with the same sequence number, the order of update does not matter.

 

KB article respective on your environment	Important Notes and Caveats
Update sequence for vSphere 8.0 and its compatible VMware products (89745)	vSphere Upgrade Center Overview of vSphere 8.0 Upgrade Process vSphere 8.0 Compatibility Guide. When upgrading your vCenter Server when Horizon View is part of your environment, refer to these resources: Update sequence for Horizon 7.x and its compatible VMware products (78445) Migration Recommendations and Restrictions for Horizon VDI Desktops (57368) Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. For more information, see: Upgrade vCenter Server Systems, ESXi Hosts, and NSX Edges
Update sequence for vSphere 7.0 and its compatible VMware products (78221)	vSphere Upgrade Center Overview of vSphere 7.0 Upgrade Process vSphere 7.0 Compatibility Guide. When upgrading your vCenter Server when Horizon View is part of your environment, refer to these resources: Update sequence for Horizon 7.x and its compatible VMware products (78445) Migration Recommendations and Restrictions for Horizon VDI Desktops (57368) Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. For more information, see: Upgrade vCenter Server Systems, ESXi Hosts, and NSX Edges
Update sequence for vSphere 6.7 and its compatible VMware products (53710)	Overview of the vSphere 6.7 Upgrade Process When upgrading your vCenter Server and with Horizon View is part of your environment, see: Migration Recommendations and Restrictions for Horizon VDI Desktops (57368)  Migrating from vCenter Windows Server to vCenter Service Appliance with VMware Horizon 7.x and 6.x (51154) Moving View-managed desktops between VMware vCenter Servers is not supported (1018045) Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. For more information, see: Upgrade vCenter Server Systems, ESXi Hosts, and NSX Edges
Update sequence for vSphere 6.5 and its compatible VMware products (2147289)	Overview of vSphere 6.5 Upgrade Process Ensure that you have quiesced, stopped or disabled integrations, VMware 2nd Party or 3rd Party products, that connect to vCenter Server during the upgrade process. vRealize Automation, vRealize Business for Cloud, and vRealize Orchestrator 7.x releases use an embedded vIDM and are independent of SSO. These can be upgraded independently and at any place in the order. vRealize Automation and vRealize Business for Cloud relies on SSO and must be upgraded in sequence. Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. For more information, see: Upgrade vCenter Server Systems, ESXi Hosts, and NSX Edges
Update sequence for vSphere 6.0 and its compatible VMware products (2109760)	Important: vSphere 6.0 End of General Support Reminder If you are running vSphere 6.0, please be advised that End of General Support (EOGS) for vSphere 6.0 will occur on March 12, 2020. For more information, see the vSphere 6.0 EOGS blog. This article only encompasses environments running vSphere and/or vCloud Suite 6.0 and VMware products compatible with vSphere 6.0. The VMware Storage Appliance is not supported in vSphere 6.0. Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. For more information, see: Upgrade vCenter Server Systems, ESXi Hosts, and NSX Edges

Additional Information

Note: This table exist so that you are aware of other vSphere Update Sequence articles that are End of Support. For more information, see Broadcom Lifecycle Product Matrix .
 

KB article respective on your environment	Important Note and Caveats
None Available	If you are using a Cisco Nexus 1000V, see the vSphere 5.5 and its compatible third-party products in the Additional Information section of this article before upgrading vCenter Server or the ESXi hosts. Before you update vCenter Server, disable the vCenter Server from the vCloud Director. Also ensure that you stop or disable other VMware services so that they do not communicate with the vCenter Server during the update process. For more information, see the Product Documentation.
None Available	Before you update the vCenter Server, disable the vCenter Server from vCloud Director. Also ensure that you stop or disable other VMware services so that they do not communicate with vCenter Server during the update process. For more information, see the Product Documentation.