In this post i will go over upgrading my 8.x vRA appliance to 8.9. As a pre requirement we do need to have vRSLCM (vRealize Lifecycle Manager) upgraded to 8.8.2 Instructions can be found here. The upgrade doesn’t include the required Product support pack. Instructions on how to get the latest support pack can be found here.

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)

Settings page with options like System Details, Logs, and Authentication Provider.

Click on Add Binaries under Product Binaries

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

Select My VMware and click on Discover

Select My VMware and click Discover to add a product binary.

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

Upgrading vRA to 8.9.0: Select binaries, click Add.

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 via hyperlink.

Click on the in Progress button to view the details

Upgrading vRA to 8.9.0 in progress. Click to view details.

We now have to wait for the download to complete

Request for VMware download in progress, showing Stage 1 with 514ms duration.

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

UI shows “Environments” with “Corp Local” and “Health” indicating unavailable status.

Click on Upgrade

The image shows a vRealize Automation environment with version 8.7.0, upgrade and add components options.

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: Proceed to Upgrade. Sync inventory if environment changed.

Select product Version 8.9.0 and click Next. We can also review the compatibility matrix to make sure the environment is compatible.

Upgrading vRA to 8.9.0: Select version, click Next, review compatibility matrix.

A new 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

Upgrading vRA: Takes product snapshot, retains or deletes after upgrade.

Run the Precheck to make sure there are no errors

Precheck step for vRA 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 validations screen for vRA upgrade, highlighting hardware requirements and a link to check them.

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

Precheck results for vRA 8.6.0 upgrade show all validations passed. Click Next to proceed.

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

Progress screen shows upgrade stages with a graph of progress.

The system will get rebooted and once its back up we will be on 8.9.0

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