In this post i will go over upgrading my 8.x vRA appliance to 8.6. As a pre requirement we do need to have vRSLCM (vRealize Lifecycle Manager) upgraded to 8.6. Instructions can be found here. The upgrade already includes the latest Product Support Pack so an update to the Product Support Pack is not required.

To get started we can go to vRealize Lifecycle Manager -> Lifecycle Operations -> Settings -> Binary Mapping. (If you haven’t added your My VMware credentials you will need to do that first by going to vRealize Lifecycle Manager -> Lifecycle Operations -> Settings -> My VMware)

The image shows a settings page with options like System Details, Logs, and System Upgrade for vRealize Automation.

Click on Add Binaries under Product Binaries

Binary Mapping page shows options to add and delete unsupported binaries in vRealize Suite.

Select My VMware and click on Discover

Adding a product binary with My VMware selected, click Discover.

We can see a list of binaries that have been discovered. We can select what we need and click on Add

The image shows a step in upgrading vRA, allowing selection of vRealize Automation 8.6.0 for upgrade.

This will create a request and start downloading the package. To view the progress we can click on the Click Here hyperlink

Binary mapping request submitted; check status by clicking provided link.

Click on the in Progress button to view the details

Upgrading vRA to 8.6 in progress. Click to view details.

We now have to wait for the download to complete

Request details show download in progress, with Stage 1 at 503ms.

After the download is complete we can go to Environments -> View Details on the environment that includes vRA

UI shows Environments page with Corp Local, Products icons, Health info, and View Details link.

Click on Upgrade

The image shows the vRealize Automation 8.1.0 upgrade page with options to add components, upgrade, and sync inventory.

An Inventory sync is recommended if the environment has changed since LCM performed the last sync. We trigger the sync from the UI or click on Proceed to continue

Upgrade wizard step: Trigger inventory sync before proceeding.

Select product Version 8.6.0 and click Next. We can also review the compatibility matrix to make sure the environment is compatible.

Upgrading vRA to 8.6.0, select version, view compatibility matrix.

Anew feature that was added was the capability to automatically create a snapshot prior to the upgrade and remove it after the upgrade. On this screen we also have the ability to chose if we want to keep the snapshots post upgrade for validation testing for example. Click next

Upgrade wizard step showing snapshot options for vRA 8.6.

Run the Precheck to make sure there are no errors

Precheck step for vRA 8.6 upgrade. Click RUN PRECHECK to validate data.

The next screen remind us of hardware requirements for vRA and vIDM which can be checked here for vRA and vIDM which can be checked here. As far as i can tell they haven’t changed since the 8.3 release. Check the I took care of the manual steps above and am ready to proceed check mark and click on Run Precheck

Manual validation step for vRA 8.6.0 upgrade, checking hardware requirements.

Once the check is complete we can review the checks that were performed and we can continue by clicking Next.

Precheck results show all validations passed for vRealize Automation 8.6 upgrade.

Review the upgrade details and click on Next. We are taken to the progress screen where we can follow the progress.

The progress screen shows stages of an upgrade to vRealize Automation 8.6.

The system will get rebooted and once its back up we will be on 8.6

Since we are doing a major upgrade i strongly recommend to clean the cache before using the new vRA version.