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6: If you did not supplied any key it will warn you that license key for previous version is no longer valid.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.

8: Select upgrade existing database as we have already backed up our DB.

9: Select vCenter Agent upgrade method.

If you select automatic then vCenter agent will be upgraded on all hosts in the vCenter Inventory. If you select manual method then you have to reconnect all the hosts to VC in order to upgrade the vCenter server agent.

10: Enter the vCenter Service Account Information

If you are using dedicated service account for administering your vSphere environment and currently login with that user then select use windows system local account or else provide the login credentials of the vCenter service account.

11: Review the vCenter ports and hit Next.

12: Select the inventory size depending upon your environment and hit Next.

13: Provide the SSO admin password and verify the lookup URL and hit Next.

14: Review the vCenter Inventory Service Information and hit Next.

15: For Customer Experience Improvement you can select Enable Data Collection. If you select this option vCenter will send some statistical data to VMware where the engineers can analyze it to make the services better.

Since this is my home lab I haven’t selected that option. Hit Install to start upgrading vCenter.

16: Let the installer finish the upgrade. In the meanwhile you can grab a cup of coffee as it will take some time to finish the upgrade process.

16: Hit Finish after installer has finished upgrading all the components.

With this we have completed upgrading our vCenter Server.

In our next post of this series we will walkthrough upgrading web client.

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