A very simple guide to perform an in place upgrade of vCenter Server 5.5 to version 6.
First of all the vCenter machine hardware prerequisites for Version 6:
- 2 vCPU
- 8 GB di ram
- At least 15 GB of hard disk space during the upgrade
- First download the ISO with the installer (about 3,5 GB in size) from site vmware.com; mount it (or decompress it) on the vCenter and launch the autorun:
- Select option “vCenter server for windows” and click install:
- Click Next at the first screen presentation:
- Enter the administrator@vsphere.local credentials of the current 5.5 installation:
- At this point the installer will make a series of check to see the status of the service:
- At the end, if everything is ok, will alert you with this warning telling you that the current DB will be migrated to the new postgre (yes, in the new version SQL Express DB no longer exists as basis for small / medium infrastructures):
- Click Next on the next editing service ports page (unless you want to change them for some reason….):
- Select the path in which to install the vCenter, note the path where the old configuration will be exported (export that at the end may be eliminated):
- In my case I did not have enough disk space to handle the update (even though I had 7 gigabytes free), I had then to add ten gigabytes on disk C: of the vm:
- Ok final summary of configurations we set setup during the wizard, here it's time to take a snapshot for security before proceeding with the upgrade! Click Upgrade to proceed:
- The upgrade process starts, you can go to drink a coffee…. preferably preceded by a lunch or dinner as the process is quite slow (obviously it depends on the performance of your server)
- At the end of the process this screen will appear if everything goes well!
- As you read from last screen if the upgrade process is successful you still have a few steps to complete:
- Enter the new licenses (you have 60 days of the trial in any case)
- Delete the data in the export directory (We are talking about 1,5 GB of disk space)
- Uninstall the SQL Express that is now useless
- Install the vSphere Client version 6 (although you should use the web client to be able to properly handle all the innovations implemented in the latest release of vSphere)
- Install the update manager service to manage the installation of patches (but also upgrades) of vsphere hosts