With the recent release of vRealize Operations 7.5, it’s time to upgrade to the latest version of VMware’s Operations Management solution. vROps 7.5 includes some very cool features that you certainly want to use: native application monitoring with the new Telegraf agent, continuous performance optimization, identification of zombie virtual disks and the new object relation ship widget. An overview of all new features is available here.

The upgrade process is not that difficult, always start with plan if you’re going to upgrade.

Run the vROps 7.5 upgrade and assessment tool

The first step in the upgrade process is to run the vROps 7.5 assessment tool. Download the vRealize Operations 7.5 upgrade assessment pack (APUAT-7.5.0.13176775.pak) from my.vmware.com and upload it to the management interface (https://<vrops-fqdn>/admin) of vROps. The management pack will automatically generate a report that will provide you with information on the impact of the upgrade.

The report is available at Support->Support bundles and can be downloaded from the management interface.

The support bundle is a zip file that you have to extract. In de ZIP file look for the apuat-data\report folder and open the index.html file. The assessment tool will provide you with a dashboards that will list potentially impacted user content such as dashboards, supermetrics and views as a result of discontinued badges, widgets and raw metrics:

Click through the report and identify any potential issues. Read more about this tool in KB 67663. After you’ve verified you’re ok, continue you with the next step.

Preserve any customized content

If you customized any of the default alert definitions, symptom definitions, recommendations or views…create a clone of these customizations because an upgrade will set these objects to their default values. BTW…it’s a best practice to not change any of these objects, but always create a clone and then used this cloned object (because of this behaviour).

Snapshot your virtual appliance(s)

The first step is to snapshot your virtual appliance(s). This is a pretty straight forward process, and shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s preferred that you snapshot your virtual appliance(s) while there powered off. Another option is to take your vRealize Operations cluster offline before creating the snapshot(s), in this scenario don’t snapshot the virtual memory and don’t quiesce the filesystem. Full details are available here.

Upload and install the OS update

The next step is to patch the OS of your vRealize Operations appliance(s). This is achieved by uploading and applying the vRealize_Operations_Manager-VA-OS-7.5.0.13165947.pak file. A reboot is part of this process. Don’t forget to take vRealize Operations cluster offline (if you haven’t done this yet); this is achieved through the “take offline” in the vROps admin interface.

Upload the file in the admin interface of vRealize Operations.

Click next and wait while the upgrade of the OS is performed. Any extra nodes are upgraded automatically as well, all nodes will be rebooted. After the OS upgrade has finished, proceed with the next step.

Upload and install the Appliance Update

This step is quite similar as the previous step. Upload and apply the vRealize_Operations_Manager-VA-7.5.0.13165947.pak file in the admin interface. This package contains the upgrade of the actual vRealize Operations software. Upload the pak file, click next and wait for the update to complete.

Verify upgrade and delete snapshots

After the upgrade completes it’s time to log on to the admin interface again and verify if the cluster is up and running. Next step is to log on to the regular vROps interface and verify if every is working as expected. If you’re happy, don’t forget to delete the snapshots. That’s it, good luck with your upgrade!