Order of Operations when Upgrading vCloud Director to 5.1

This should be a short article. I’m assuming you have vCD 1.5 running on vSphere 5.0 with vShield Manager 5.0.

Starting with:

• vCenter Orchestrator 5.0
• vCenter Server 5.0
• vShield Manager 5.0.x
• ESXi 5.0
• vCloud Director 1.5.x

We want to end up with everything on v5.1.x

1. Update Orchestrator to 5.1 – it’s compatible with vCenter 5.0 and 5.1
2. Update vShield Manager to 5.0.2.  This is important, this version works with both vCenter 5.0 & 5.1 as well as vCD 1.5 and 5.1. Then redeploy your vShield Edge appliances
3. Update vCloud Director to 5.1.  Be sure to back up your database before upgrading in case you have to roll-back
4. Update vCenter Server to 5.1.  Install your Single-Sign On Service at this step too.
5. Update vShield Manager to vCenter Security & Networking 5.1.  Then redeploy your vShield Edge appliances.
6. Update VMware Update Manager to 5.1
7. Use VUM to upgrade ESXi to 5.1

Note: If you’ve deployed VMware View, you’ll want to upgrade it to v5.1.2 before upgrading vCenter.

vCloud Suite 5.1 upgrade suggestions

This information will probably be outdated quickly, but for now (9/14/2012), here are my suggestions and tips concerning vCloud Suite 5.1

• If you plan to use Microsoft SQL Server for your SSO database, update the service configuration to listen on a static port.  vCenter Server and VUM use the .NET native SQL client, so they can deal with dynamic TCP ports on the SQL service, but SSO uses the Java SQL driver, which will require a static port (TCP 1433 by default)
• Many administrators have had problems logging into their vCenter Server after installing SSO and upgrading vCenter Server to 5.1.  It appears that if the vCenter Server is a member of the domain, it may still try to use local credentials as the initial/default SSO source.  If your vCenter Server is a member of an Active Directory domain, be sure to locate/create a local admin account before upgrading vCenter Server to 5.1 so you can log on if you are affected by this issue
• If you are running EMC Powerpath/VE on your ESXi hosts, do NOT upgrade to ESXi 5.1 yet.  The version of Powerpath/VE that works with ESXi 5.1 has not yet been released.
• Despite the naming similarities, VMware View 5.1 is not compatible with vSphere 5.1.  Do not yet upgrade to vSphere 5.1 in your View environment.
• The vCloud API for vCloud Director 5.1 is different from the API for vCloud Director 1.5.1.  If you have developed anything that consumes the vCloud API, you will probably have to make significant changes.  If you have vCO packages/workflows that use the vCloud API, you may be affected and should upgrade vCO and vCloud in a lab/test environment where you can update the objects appropriately first.
• There is a new version of the Cisco Nexus 1000V for vSphere 5.1 that should be factored into your upgrade plan if your environment uses that component.
• In vCenter Server 2.5-4.0, host passwords are encrypted in the database using an encryption key of 512-to-1024 bits. However, in 5.1, the encryption key must be 2048 bits. If it is not, the vCenter Services may not start. Check this KB article to see how to check and correct this issue.