vCloud Director 9.7: Updating the Appliance

A recent update was released for vCloud Directory for Service Providers 9.7.0.1 (release notes) and I’ve been waiting for that update to get across a couple of issues.

This is my first time to work with upgrade the vCD appliance, so I thought it would be a good stop to write a quick blog post about it. One thing for sure is that its easy, straight-forward and requires less than 5 minutes depending on the number of cells you have (in my case it was 3 cells).

I followed this reference documentation while preparing and here after you’ll find my iteration on doing it:

• If you’re using the embedded database, you can either backup the database itself or simply backup all appliances.
• Take a snapshot of your appliances before starting.
• Download the update package.
• You can use the NFS share to unzip the archive so that to save time on having to upload it to all cells.
• Verify primary database owner via any of the appliance’s VAMI.

• mkdir /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/local-update-package
• Upload the update archive to the created director
• cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/local-update-package
• tar -zxf VMware_vCloud_Director_9.7.0.4264-13635483_update.tar.gz (this is 9.7.0.1
• vamicli update –repo file:///opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/local-update-package
• vamicli update –check
• /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u <vCD System Admin User> cell –shutdown
• vamicli update –install latest
• Repeat this to all appliances.

• Run the upgrade command on the primary node which holds the primary database -> /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade
• After you run the previous command it will ask you if you want to start the vmware-vcd service, at this point in time you should type “y“.
• Finally, start the vCD Service on all appliances “service vmware-vcd start“.

And there you have it, happy updates/upgrades and feature-unlocking ;-).

(Abdullah)^2