How to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 7.0

VMware
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VMware vCenter 7.0 has been released for several months now and figured it was about time I upgraded my home lab to the latest version.

This post will detail all the steps needed to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 7.0 without any issues.

Getting Started

Before beginning, I HIGHLY recommended you first check the VMware Interoperability Matrix before performing any upgrade to check compatibility of other VMware products.

Then go download the VCSA 7.0 ISO if you haven’t already and lets get started with the upgrade!

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VMware vSphere 7 announced

VMware
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VMware vSphere 7

Some pretty big news coming out of VMware today. The announcement of VMware vSphere 7 to become available May 1, 2020! One of the biggest item coming out of this news so far is that vSphere 7 will come in two options.

The first being vSphere 7 as we all have known it to be for years and then the second being vSphere 7 with Kubernetes which will be available through VMware Cloud Foundation and is a new generation of vSphere for containerized applications.

Other notables is that the flash based vSphere client is FINALLY no more! From here on out, only the HTML 5 will exist. vCenter Server on Windows will also finally be put to rest and new deployments of vCenter server will be done using the tried and tested vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) based on PhotonOS linux.

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How to convert VMDK to OVF file format

VMware
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Here is a quick and easy way to convert a VMDK to OVF file format using the OVF Tool from VMware.

  1. First download and install the VMware OVF Tool for your operating system.
  2. Open a command prompt as Administrator and navigate to the OVF Tool install directory: 
    
cd C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool

    vmdk to ovf command prompt

  3. Next, type in the following command to convert VMDK to OVF: 
    
ovftool.exe \virtualmachine.vmx \virtualmachine.ovf

    convert vmdk to ovf command

After a few minutes time you should you should see a “Transfer Completed, Completed successfully” message and your VMDK to OVF file conversion is complete and ready for use.
convert vmdk to ovf complete

VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.2 – No more Windows

VMware
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VMware has just announced the release of Site Recovery Manager 8.2. There are a number of new items in SRM 8.2, such as enhancements to the HTML5 user interface, support for vSphere 6.7 Update 2, but most notably is Site Recovery Manager 8.2 virtual appliance!

No more Microsoft Windows license needed! The SRM 8.2 virtual appliance runs on the Photon OS distro, which is similar to what the vCenter virtual appliance has been running on for years now.

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Update VMware Windows VM’s DNS using PowerCLI

How to update VMware Windows VM’s DNS using PowerCLI

VMware
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This post will show you how to update a VMware Windows virtual machine’s DNS IP addresses using PowerCLI.

You’ll also see how I went from a starting point to a fully working script – all thanks to the awesome #vCommunity!

Here at work we’ve been doing a number of networking, AD, and DNS changes. In doing so, our DNS IP address have changed. Changing the DNS settings for our workstations was easy, simply edit the DHCP scope.

The servers on the other hand all had static IP’s and static DNS IP’s entered, each of which needed to be updated.

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How to update VMware ESXi 6.7 to 6.7 Update 1

VMware
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To go along with the newly released VMware vCenter 6.7 Update 1 release, comes VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 1 as well.

As you might expect with an Update 1 release there are a number of patches, fixes and new additions with ESXi 6.7 U1. If you haven’t already seen, check out the release notes here.

Below are two ways to easily upgrade your ESXi 6.0-6.7 hosts to ESXi 6.7 U1 using the command line or by using VMware Update Manager.
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Upgrade VCSA 6.5 to VCSA 6.7 Update 1

VMware
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VMware vCenter 6.7 U1 has recently been released. Last week I posted how to upgrade VCSA 6.7 to 6.7 Update 1, this post will walk you though upgrading VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 to VCSA 6.7 Update 1!

When doing a VCSA version upgrade the upgrade process is much different, than going from say 6.7 to 6.7 U1. When going from 6.5 to 6.7 the upgrade is actually broken up into two stages.

The first stage involves deploying a brand new vCenter 6.7 appliance. Then the second stage will copy the data from your 6.5 VCSA into the newly deployed 6.7 VCSA from stage 1.

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VMware vCenter Service Appliance Update

Update vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 6.7 Update 1

VMware
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VMware has released vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1 and with comes with a number changes.

One most notable change is the feature complete HTML5 vSphere client. The vSphere client in vCenter 6.7 Update 1 now includes the ability to manage:

  • Host profiles
  • Auto deploy
  • Full vSphere Update Manager (VUM)
  • A new dark theme
  • and vCenter High Availability.

That’s no where near all of the changes though, there are many more changes and updates in the 6.7 Update 1 update. Be sure to read the full release notes here.

In this post we’ll see just how easy it is to upgrade from VCSA 6.7 to VCSA 6.7 Update 1 in just a couple steps!

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How to upgrade ESXi 6.5 to ESXi 6.7

VMware
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VMware released ESXi 6.7 a little while ago, but it’s only been here recently have I started deploying it in my home and work lab environments. Below are two ways to easily upgrade your ESXi 6.5 hosts to ESXi 6.7 using the command line or by using the VMware ESXi offline bundle.

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