vCenter - Windows OS in-place Upgrade

[vfk]

Hello,

Are there any gotcha to upgrade vCenter to Windows 2012 R2 from Windows 2012 using in-place upgrade, or is it better to perform clean install and move services across?  Just exploring options, in-place upgrade is the easiest route. 

PS:  this is part of standardisation in the org, and building on 2012 R2 going forward.

[vNEX]

Hi,

no personal experience with 2012R2 but see these:

http://www.v-front.de/2014/03/issue-after-upgrading-your-vcenter-55.html?m=1

http://forums.veeam.com/vmware-vsphere-f24/in-place-server-2012-r2-upgrade-results-veeam-vcenter-server-t19373.html

Regards,

P.

[NealeC]

Is your vCenter server a VM?

If it is then

1. Snapshot it prior to the R2 upgrade.
2. Disable HA on the cluster that the vcenter VM is in (if it is)
3. Ensure you can connect via vSphere Client to the ESXi Host that your vcentre is sat on
4. Do your R2 upgrade
5. Check everything went ok.
6. If it did, delete the snapshot
7. If it didn't, roll back (or forward fix if you think it's obvious or related to one of the links posted by vNEX)

Good Luck! :-)

[vfk]

That is exactly what I was planning to do, but just wanted to check if anyone else has done the in-place upgrade before and could offer some advice...vNEX those are useful links.

[JPM300]

Hey vfk,

Typically I always do a fresh install to avoid any uncertiainty however I can say the Windows 7 to 8/8.1 and Server 2008 - 2012/R2 did go really smooth in a few test / cases we did do, so it looks like this process is getting better.  With that said the past still rings pretty hard the back of the brain and I still rather do fresh installs, however this is a lot more work since you would have to re-configure vCenter and all the plugins that go with it these days.  With the snapshot option your risk is pretty small and if push really came to shove and you had some issues a few months down the line after you deleted the snapshot as much work as it is to re-install vcenter its not hard and it also not distrupting to the business.

Hope this has helped

[vfk]

I hear you, clean install is what I used to do, however this is major hassle to re-install everything, in-place is the better, I will give it ago and report back on this forum.  I suspect, this won't happen in the next couple weeks during competing priorities.

[King_Robert]

Upgrading the operating system on which vCenter server is installed is something that can be done without the need of creating a new database, and it can also be done in a couple of different ways. In order to upgrade the Windows operating system you should follow Microsoft’s recommendations, but when doing an in-place upgrade all services related to vCenter should be stopped before proceeding.

vCenter Server Services

Another approach to this upgrade would be to simply install vCenter Server in a newly provision system with the current and desired version of Windows. Now in order to do this effectively perform the following steps before installing vCenter Server:

• Stop vCenter related services in the Windows Services snap-in (services.msc) of the running server
• Create a new System DSN pointing the new server to the database location
• Import the SSL keys from the running server

[Cyberfed27]

Actually one of our admins did this exact process yesterday. He accidentally used an older ISO (Non R2) to create the VM originally.

A couple of mouse clicks later and a reboot and it was upgraded to R2 with no issues. Childs play!

[vfk]

Cyberfed27, thanks for that info, that is really helpful.

[vhenryanchante]

Hola, sabes he trabajado en mas de 70 instalaciones de vcenter entre 5.1 y 5.5 y te soy sincero el vcenter server appliance funciona muy bien y no tengo problemas de servicios, etc como los que encuentras en Windows, yo 100% Linux y su web de administración es super sencilla, suerte.