Monthly Archives: March 2015

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 6 Upgrading vSphere Web Client

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In our last posts of this series we learnt :

Taking DB and SSL Certficates Backup

Upgrading vCenter SSO

Upgrading vCenter Inventory Service

Upgrading vCenter Server

Now its time to upgrade the web client. Before starting the upgrade process lets discuss the basics about vSphere Web Client

The vSphere Web Client allows you to connect to a vCenter server to manage your vSphere environment through a web browser. Web Client make its entry with version 5.0 but with limited functionality. With further release of vSphere versions Web Client was optimized a lot and now a days VMware is pushing hard to use vSphere web client instead of windows based VI client.

All the new features of vSphere 5.5 can only be performed using vSphere web client and it will not be available in the traditional windows client. In the future release of vSphere version VMware can totally take out the regular C# VI Client and the only choice left will be using Web Client to manage the Virtual Infrastructure.… Read More

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 5 Upgrading vCenter Server

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In our last few posts we have walkthrough the process of

Taking DB and SSL Certficates Backup

Upgrading vCenter SSO

Upgrading vCenter Inventory Service

Now its time to upgrade the vCenter Server. So lets start

Steps:

1: Launch the autorun.exe file from the installation directory and select vCenter Server and hit Install.

2: Select the installer language and hit OK.

3: Installer will detect previous version of vCenter Server already installed and warn you that it will be upgraded to version 5.5. Ignore the warning and hit Next.

4: Accept the License Agreement and hit Next.

5: You can provide the installation key during upgrade or else after Upgradation is complete.

6: If you did not supplied any key it will warn you that license key for previous version is no longer valid. Ignore the warning and click Next.

7: If you have chosed to use Windows Authentication during DSN setup it will take the credentials of currently login user and you can hit Next or else you have to specify DB username and password for your vCenter DB.… Read More

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 4 Upgrading Inventory Service

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In our last post we learnt

Taking DB and SSL Certficates Backup

Upgrading vCenter SSO

In this post we will focus on upgrading vCenter Inventory Service.

Before start upgrading the Inventory Service lets discuss some basics about what actually is the Inventory Service.

Inventory Service reduces direct client requests to the vCenter server with query caching, reducing the load on core vCenter Server processes. Generally only 10% of traffic to a vCenter Server consists of writes and most of the requests (90%) are read requests. So if we can cache those reads so that we don’t have to ask vCenter to retrieve from its database each time, we can see a significant improvement in response times; while also reducing the load on the more critical vCenter Server itself.

Inventory service stores vCenter server application and inventory data which enable us to search and access objects across linked vCenter Server systems. The main use case of the Inventory Service is to manage the vSphere Web Client inventory objects and property queries that the client requests when users navigate the vSphere environment.… Read More

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 3 Upgrading SSO

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In previous post we have gone through some of the basic considerations which should be kept in mind before starting the upgrade process and also we learnt Taking DB and SSL Certficates Backup

In this post we will start with upgrading the vCenter SSO

Before starting upgrading the Single Sign On lets discuss a bit about what has been changed in version 5.5.

SSO architecture has been restructured from the scratch in version 5.5. The new SSO architecture is based on a multi-master model where each instance is automatically kept up to date with it peers via built-in replication. You can create sites to provide logical groupings of registered resources that maybe geographical or organizational separate as well as support for multiple tenants.

Below are some of the key improvements and changes that are made in the vCenter Single Sign-on 5.5 as compared to previous versions:

  1. Dependency on the external Database has been removed
  2. Single Sign-on is now supports multi-master Model and it will be aware about sites.
… Read More

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 2 Database and SSL Certificates Backup

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Before proceeding with upgrading vCenter 5.1 to vCenter 5.5, taking backup of the VC database and SSL certificates are very important so that if anything goes wrong we can revert back to original configuration anytime.

Database backup can be taken by you yourself or by your DB admin depending upon the type of environment where you are working. Generally in big corporates there are separate team which do all the DB activities, however, as a vSphere Admin you should know how to do basic DB activities. Backing up DB is very simple and straight forward task. I will walk through all the steps in this post to make it easier and simple to understand. So let’s start!!!

Before proceeding with taking backup we need to identify the SQL server name and Database Instance Name of your vCenter server database.

How to find out DB instance name

RDP to the server where your vCenter DB is installed and go to Start > Administrative Tools > Data Sources (ODBC) connections and launch ODBC Data Source Administrator.… Read More

Upgrading vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5- Part 1 Basics

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Yesterday I decided to upgrade my home lab from vSphere 5.1 version to vSphere 5.5 as part of my VCAP preparation (as VCAP 510 exam is no longer valid) and I decided to write a post on that so that it can be helpful for others as well.

The upgrade process is not much complex but you have to take certain considerations in mind before starting the upgrade process. With vSphere 5.5 VMware has done many changes and your environment should have that kind hardware/software which can support version 5.5.

We will be covering the upgrade process in following 5 steps

Taking DB and SSL Certficates Backup

Upgrading vCenter SSO

Upgrading vCenter Inventory Service

Upgrading vCenter Server

Upgrading vSphere Web Client

Before starting the upgrade lets look at the important considerations

1: Upgrade Considerations

There are 2 upgrades methods available:

Simple Install upgrade
The Simple Install upgrade will upgrade all the vCenter components (SSO + Inventory Service + vCenter Server + Web Client) on a single machine like a simple install will install all components on a single machine.… Read More