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

In our last post we learnt

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.

So we have covered now the basics of Inventory service lets jump into upgrading it.

1: launch the autorun.exe from installation directory and select Inventory Service and hit install

2: Select the installer language and hit OK.

3: An earlier version of installed Inventory Service will be detected by installer and tell us that it will be upgraded to version 5.5. Hit Next

4: Accept the License agreement and hit Next.

5: Database selection option

To retain your existing database select “Keep my existing database” option or else if you want a brand new database select “Replace my existing database option”. Selecting this option will wipe out all the historical data from previous version of service (I guess no one want to do that otherwise what is the point of upgrading. we could have gone for clean install)

6: Enter the FQDN of your vCenter server (if Inventory Service is installed on same machine where all the components are installed)

7: Review and accept the default ports setting and hit Next.

8: Select the inventory size as per your environment and hit Next.

9: Enter the password for the SSO administrator account and click on Next

10: Click on Install button to start upgrading Inventory Service. If you have missed something you can review the settings back by clicking Back button.