On May 15th VMware has released a new version of its own docker implementation product, vSphere Integrated Containers 1.4, as always it comes with enhancements that include but not limited to support for vSphere 6.7 and ROBO deployments, affinity rules (more on that in a future post) and some management portal improvements.
But today I wanna cover the upgrade process, I will break it into 3 phases for easier consumption;
- Upgrade vSphere Integrated Containers Appliance (This post)
- Upgrade Virtual Container Hosts (VCH)
To be honest the upgrade itself is not really an in-place upgrade, in fact, the process involves deploying a new VIC appliance and copying the relevant information from the previous appliance to the new one, including management portal, registry configuration and data.
The good thing about it is that it leaves you with an easy rollback option, since the previous appliance is kept intact, in case of any problem, you can just get rid of the new appliance and power the previous one back on and everything will still there just the way it was before the upgrade.
My actual environment compresses of a VIC 1.3 and one VCH connected to it;
obs: you can upgrade from any version later than 1.2.x
I also have a project (cnameetupsp), with a few images, which has been scanned for vulnerabilities and signed by Content Trust (another post I own you guys).
Let’s start downloading and deploying VIC 1.4 since it’s a new appliance, give it it’s own IP address and hostname.
OVA deploy process is pretty standard among VMware’s solutions, so I’m not going through it, but if you still have doubts the product's documentation is your friend.
Important: Make sure to use the Flex-based vSphere Web Client to deploy it, even if you are using vSphere 6.7, because HTML5 Web Client is not ready for VIC yet, although the deployment my succeed the configuration required for VIC to work might not be implemented properly.
Once the appliance is deployed access it through SSH. Make sure to enable it during OVA deployment.
Important 2: do NOT go to the Getting Started page of the new appliance, because it will initiate the services for a new set up and would cause the upgrade to fail, if you have done it, just deploy a new appliance ; )
Once on the new appliance console just run the upgrade script;
Run: ./etc/vmware/upgrade/upgrade.sh
The script will prompt you with the information about the vCenter where the previous appliance is provisioned, if you have an external PSC provide their information as well otherwise just leave it blank
Now you need to provide the information about your previous VIC appliance, make sure the appliance is power on and with SSH enabled, if not, power off the appliance and enable it through Permit Root Login within vApp Options.
There you go, just sit back, relax and watch the upgrade process running;
During the process, the relevant files are copied over and the old appliance is shut down.
If you need more information or for troubleshooting needs, the log is saved on /var/log/vmware/upgrade.log
Once it’s done, just power on the new appliance and log in.
As we can see the upgrade was successful, my VCH is connected to the new VIC Appliance
My projects and images are there as well.
The only downside is that my images came unsigned, it’s due as a new appliance comes with a different certificate from my previous one.
So, if you are using Content Trust you will have to plan it accordingly and resigned your images after the upgrade so the users will be able to pull and run them again.
That’s all for today, stay tuned for the remaining upgrade phases; vSphere Plugin and Virtual Container Hosts.
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