Upgrade vRealize Automation 8.1 to 8.2

Recently I got chance to Upgrade vRealize Automation 8.1 to 8.2 version in my test environment and it was a great learning while upgrading  . I will share my experience through series of blog posts so that it can help audience to  upgrade vRealize Automation 8.2. If they plan to upgrade their environment form vRA 8.1 to 8.2 .

Let's Start Below you can see  all the steps to upgrade vRA 8.1  to 8.2 environment.

 

1- Upgrade vRSLCM 8.1 to 8.2

2-Upgrade vRA 8.1 to 8.2

 

First we need  to upgrade vRSLCM 8.1 to 8.2 

 

Let's Start to upgrade vRSLCM 8.1 to 8.2 

 

Log on to your vRSLCM Appliance and click on  Lifecycle Operations.

Go to Settings 

Click on “System Upgrade”

Once  you click in System Upgrade then after  click  on the ‘Check for Upgrade‘ button. Now you can see Upgrade  new version is available as shown below.

Click on  the “Create Snapshot” button which help us to create a Snapshot of  vRSLCM 

Provide the vCenter details.

Now you can monitor the snapshot request .

Let’s go for System Upgrade .  vRSLCM will download the necessary files as shown below .

After file download , Installation will happen 

vRSLCM  will get reboot reboot  to complete the installation . you will be see   the following screen during the time 

Once vRSLCM is upgraded, you can check the version under ‘Settings‘ – System Details

Now we have upgraded vRSLCM from 8.1 to 8.2 

 

Note – After vRSLCM upgrade , we must be upgrade VIDM for old version to new version which is compatible with vRA. In my  lab , I have updated version of VIDM 3.3.2 which is compatible with vRA 8.2 . 

 

Below you can find the VMware Interoperability Matrix for reference

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php#interop&114=4692&140=4060

 

 If you are following above post  we have  upgraded vRSLCM from 8.1 to 8.2 and we have latest VIDM 3.3.2 version. 

 

Now we going to upgrade vRA 8.1  to vRA 8.2 using vRSLCM. 

 

Prerequisite

1-     Make sure you should have vRSLCM 8.2 installed 

2-     You should have  VIDM 3.3.2 installed .

3-     Configure your MyVMware account in vRSLCM  or upload vRA 8.2 upgrade ISO.   

4-     Make sure that there is enough free space on the vRA 8 appliance. If not, vRSLCM will throw an error while downloading  or uploading ISO in vRSLCM.

 

In my lab I am going to upload vRA 8.2 upgrade ISO . Let start !!!

 

First we need to download  vRA 8.2 upgrade ISO file form VMware portal as mention below. 

 

Now time to upload the iso form local system to vRSLCM.

 Log on to vRSLCM Appliance and go to Settings – “Binary Mapping”

Go in Product Binaries and clock on ‘Add Binaries’

Choose “Local” and provide the ISO path (/data/binaries/OVA). Select ‘vRealize Automation‘ with version ‘8.2.0‘ and click “Add”

You can see that vRealize Automation 8.2 upgrade binaries have been added.

Upgrade to vRA 8.2 through vRSLCM

Log on to vRSLCM Appliance and go to ‘Environments’ – <your-vRA Environment > and then click Upgrade as shown below

Make sure before proceed  click on to trigger Inventory Sync.

you can monitor the status in Requests tab.

Once  trigger Inventory Sync  request complete successfully then go for Upgrade by clicking “Proceed”

we have uploaded  the vRA 8.2 Binaries through ‘WINSCP‘ in vRSLCM . Now we can select it during the upgrade process and it is now available in the local vRSLCM Repository  and click ‘Next‘ to continue. 

During the precheck, I have encountered error and resolved it applying below workaround.

Workaround:

 

Increase disk 3 size for 8 GB to 25 GB and follow below workaround to resolve the issue. 

Workaround

 

SSH to the appliance.

Run the command: "vracli disk-mgr resize". The resize procedure will start in up to a minute. Progress could be monitored in the /var/log/disk_resize.log. It is expected to fail while resizing file system for logs disk.

Run the command: "/usr/sbin/resize2fs /dev/mapper/logs_vg-services--logs"

Run the command:

For vRA/vRO 8.0: "rm /var/run/disk_stats"

For vRA/vRO 8.0.1 and 8.1: "rm /var/vmware/prelude/disk-management/disk_stats"

 Run the command  "vracli disk-mgr" to verify if new disk space is visible.

 

Once the Pre-Check completed click Next to continue.

Review your Upgrade in the Upgrade Details click Submit for upgrade

Now you can monitor the vRA Upgrade Progress

Now we have successfully upgraded the vRA 8.2 . It will take 2 hours to complete in lab   but in my lab it took much time as I had network issue . 

Now you can verify the vRA new version through vRA Environment in vRSLCM you will see that vRA is now at version 8.2.0

Other way to Verify new version, browse to the vRA Appliance you will be see vRA 8.2.0 Version .

Now we have new upgraded vRA 8.2 version in our environment!!

I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing.