How to Update VMware VCSA 8 Offline via patch ISO
A few days ago I had the challenge to upgrade my customers vSphere environment offline. So I thought, yep, you have to do a blog post about that. There are indeed situations where a direct upgrade via internet is not possible e.g. in darksites, security customers and many more. But also for environments where the internet connection might not be reliable enough.
In such cases VMware offers the possibility to download a specific patch ISO in advance and then upgrade offline on site respectively in the vSphere network. Enough theory, let us get started. First, visit the following VMware Customer Connect link and log in with your credentials:
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/group/vmware/patch
Now you select the respective product, in our case a vCenter and we want to upgrade from 8.0 to 8.0U1a. So we download the VC-8.0u1a patch ISO.
Once you have downloaded the VC-8.0u1a.iso, upload it accordingly to a datastore in vSphere, where the vCenter VM can also access it.
After the upload, we edit the settings of the vCenter VM by adding VC-8.0u1a.iso to the CD/DVD drive.
After clicking Datastore ISO File you have to select the respective Patch ISO:
And do not forget to click on Connected otherwise the vCenter will not see the ISO.
At this Point please stop and go to the VAMI Interface -> https://VCSA-FQDN:5480 login with root and start a Backup of your VMware vCenter or create a Snapshot in case of errors.
If you do not have Backup Server for your VCSA please refer to my other Blog post:
After successfully backing up the vCenter, stay in the VAMI interface and move over to the Update tab:
As you can see there are already several patches, because my vCenter has an internet connection. But I can still show you the offline way / the attached Patch ISO by clicking on Check Updates -> Check CD ROM in the upper right corner:
To make sure everything runs smoothly, click on Run Pre-Update Checks. This additionally shows how long the expected Downtime will be. In my case we have warnings because of various plugins, which I ignore now skillfully, because not critical 😉 The estimated Downtime is at 41 minutes but I think it will be done faster.
It is the force of habit, I always stage first before I install/remediate.
And finally install the new patch:
Accep the terms and conditions as always:
As soon as you click on Next, there will be another Pre-Update check running. And mentioned before I have some warnings because of my Runecast Plugin I will ignore and continue:
If you forgot your vCenter Backup you will get now the last chance to backup your vCenter 😉
After you are really really sure that your vCenter backup has been created (Snapshots are no Backups), check “I have backed up vCenter…” and click Finish.
In this progress the vCenter will run another pre-check, stop services and install the newest RPMs of vSphere 8.0U1a.
Meanwhile you can get access via SSH to your vCenter and check on which state your Update process is:
This state might take a while:
After successfully installing the patches, you will get the message “Installation Complete“:
At the same time, check the “Software Update State .conf” again:
One last thing before I finish this Blog post, the VC-8.0u1a.iso is still attached to vCenter VM, you have to disconnect the ISO off the CD/DVD drive. For this we switch to vSphere, select the vCenter VM and edit the settings.
Simply select Client Device again, deselect the Connected button and click OK. Both at the customer site and in my update process, we lost connection to vCenter as soon as we selected Client Device. To reconnect to vCenter, we need to switch to the ESXi server where vCenter is running.
Here we see that one question is open and the classic VM icon has been replaced with a conversation icon. You switch to the VM view and allow the ISO to be thrown out.
That is it from this blog post. If anyone has an idea how we can solve the CD/DVD drive problem, please leave a comment. 🙂 This Blog post is inspired by this Knowledge Base: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/84322