Helloooo!

If you are following the series: we have just upgraded our vRSLCM Appliance to 8.1 and upgraded VIDM to 3.3.2 using vRSLCM 8.1. Now we can continue the next step and upgrade vRA 8 to vRA 8.1 using vRSLCM!

I’m running vRealize Automation Version 8.0.1.7355 (15294185) with the Hotfix for Expiration of Root Accounts installed (link).

Below you can find the VMware Interoperability Matrix for reference:

Prerequisites

• Have vRSLCM 8.1 installed
• Have VIDM 3.3.2 installed
• Make sure that you have this hotfix installed regarding the Expiration of Root Accounts on the vRA 8 Containers.
• Configure your ‘MyVMware‘ account in vRSLCM
• Make sure that there is enough free space on the vRA 8 appliance. If not, vRSLCM will throw an error. Increasing disk space is easy, see this link for a short how-to.
• Make sure your vRA 8 VM has 12 CPUs & 40GB RAM assigned. You can do this by shutting down vRA 8 & assigning more CPUs & RAM to the VM. Power it back up. Otherwise the Pre-Check will fail:
  

Download vRA 8.1 with vRSLCM

The firs step in upgrading vRA to vRA 8.1 is downloading the vRA 8.1 binaries using vRSLCM. I found that the easiest way to do this (at least for me) is to add your ‘MyVMware’ account to vRSLCM. Afterwards vRSLCM can download the vRA 8.1 binaries for you!

1. Log on to your vRSLCM Appliance and go to ‘Settings‘ – ‘Binary Mapping‘ as shown below:
   
2. On the ‘Product Binaries‘ page select ‘Add Binaries’:
   
3. Choose ‘My VMware‘ as location type (or any other depending on your setup). Click ‘Discover‘ and wait for the list to populate. Once populated filter the ‘Name‘ column on ‘vRealize Automation‘ and look for the ‘8.1.0‘ version:
   
4. Select ‘vRealize Automation‘ with version ‘8.1.0‘ and click ‘Add‘ at the bottom right:
   
5. The Download Request will now start. As with any vRSLCM Request you can monitor the status of the Request:
   
6. In my environment the download took 21min. to complete:
   
7. When you head back to your ‘Binary Mapping‘ overview, you’ll see that vRealize Automation 8.1 upgrade binaries have been added:
   

Upgrade to vRA 8.1 with vRSLCM

Now that we have the vRA 8.1 binaries we can start to upgrade vRA 8 using vRSLCM!

1. Log on to your vRSLCM Appliance and go to ‘Environments’ – ‘<your-environment>’ and click ‘Upgrade’:
   
2. Make sure to trigger an Inventory Sync:
   
3. As with any vRSLCM Request, you can monitor the status of the Inventory Sync Request:
   
4. After completion, proceed with the ‘Upgrade ‘process by clicking ‘Proceed‘:
   
5. Since we have downloaded the vRA 8.1 Binaries via our ‘MyVMware‘ account in vRSLCM we can select it during the upgrade process and it is now available in the local vRSLCM Repository:
   
6. Make sure that you have applied the KB before proceeding! Otherwise you might experience issues with your Pod’s root accounts to be expired!
   
7. Once the Pre-Check completes click ‘Next‘ to continue:
   
8. Review your Upgrade in the Upgrade Summary, click ‘Submit‘ to proceed with the upgrade:
   
9. You will be taken to the vRSLCM Request where you can monitor the vRA Upgrade Progress:
   
10. The vRA 8.1 Upgrade took 1h & 9 minutes in my environment:
    
11. When you check your vRA Environment in vRSLCM you will see that vRA is now at version 8.1.0:
    
12. Browsing to the vRA Appliance you will be greeted with the vRA 8.1.0 Version number:
    

vRA has now been upgraded to version 8.1.0!

• vRA