Hopefully you’ve already learned about all the new goodness in new vRealize Operations 6.5. If not, you should know that the new 6.5 has some very cool features including:
- Integration with vRealize Log Insight for even faster troubleshooting
- Integration with vRealize Business for Cloud via Business Management tab in vRealize Operations
- Automate upgrade of in-guest End Point Operations agents
- Full-scale for predictive Distributed Resource Scheduler (pDRS)
- Webhooks for OOTB integration with chat services (like Slack and HipChat), ServiceNow, PagerDuty, vRealize Orchestrator, Jenkins, and more
Sounds great, right? (nods all around) So how do you get from whatever version of vRealize Operations you are running now to the new 6.5? And (side note), what if you don’t have vRealize Operations installed at all? Let’s cover the last question, first.
Before we jump in into the upgrade, step by step, if you don’t already have vRealize Operations you can do a clean installation and skip the step below. vRrealize Operations can be easily deployed, as a virtual appliance, by downloading it here and following the process in the vRealize Operations deployment guide.
More resources about the new vRealize 6.5 features can be found in Sunny Dua’s post on vRealize Operations 6.5 New Features, in Taruna Gandhi’s post on What’s New in vROps 6.5, in the vRealize Operations 6.5 Release Notes, and in my video interview with Taruna Gandhi.
Now back to the question of how to perform a step by step upgrade from an existing installation of vRealize Operations to the latest and greatest… let’s find out!
How to Upgrade to vRealize Operations 6.5, Step by Step
One of the many advantages to using the virtual appliance deployment of vRealize Operations is that it’s not only easy to deploy but it’s super-easy to upgrade. Both the operating system AND the vRealize Operations application can be upgraded in a few clicks. Here’s how to do it, step by step:
Step 1 – Download the vRealize Operations Manager Virtual Appliance Updates – both the operating sytem update and the virtual appliance update. You can do this from the same page on My VMware where you download vRealize Operations 6.5. Both of these are PAK files that will have file names similar to-
vRealize_Operations_Manager-VA-OS-6.5.0.5097678.pak
and
vRealize_Operations_Manager-VA-6.5.0.5097678.pak
(there may be slightly newer builds since the writing of this blog post but these are the versions that I used when I performed the update below)
Step 2 – Login to the vROps admin interface at – https://<master-node-FQDN-or-IP-address>/admin
Step 3 – Take the cluster offline
Step 4 (Optionally) – take a snapshot of all virtual appliances that make up your vROps cluster. Per VMware’s update instructions, you should uncheck the option to snapshot the virtual appliance memory and uncheck the option to quiesce the guest operating system.
Step 5 – Install the Operating System Update
Go to the Software Update panel and click Install a Software Update.
Select the OS PAK update file that you downloaded, as in the graphic below and click Upload
After the upload, click Next
Accept the end user license agreement and click Next
Review the release info and click Next
Click Install to start the OS update
After some time, the OS update will be complete and you can move on to the virtual appliance update.
Step 6 – Install the vRealize Operations Manager virtual appliance update
As in Step 5, you’ll go to the Software Update panel and click Install Software Update.
Follow the same series of steps, shown above but provide the virtual appliance update PAK file this time. Click Upload.
After the update, click Next to continue.
Accept the end user license agreement and review the update information then click Install to begin the virtual appliance update.
You’ll see the installation in progress in the software update panel.
After some time, the virtual appliance will restart. Once restarted you should log back in to the admin console, where the main Cluster Status page appears. The cluster will go online automatically but verify that is is. To verify that the upgrade to 6.5 was successful, go to the Software Update section and you should see the new version shown, as in the graphic below.
With that, you have successfully upgraded to the latest and greatest vRealize Operations, version 6.5! Now you can get started using new features like the Slack integration, Log Insight integration, and predictive distributed resource scheduler. Enjoy!
