Heads Up! VSA 5.1 Upgrade Issues

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For those of you who are already using VSA 1.0, and are considering an upgrade to VSA 5.1, the following information will be of interest to you.

First off, read the documentation very carefully. If you do not follow the correct sequence of steps to perform the upgrade, the upgrade can fail. This sequence is called out very clearly in the release notes, but here it is again:

  • Upgrade vCenter Server from version 5.0 to 5.1
  • Upgrade the vSphere Storage Appliance from version 1.0 to 5.1.
  • Enter cluster maintenance mode.
  • Upgrade the ESXi hosts from version 5.0 to 5.1.
  • Exit cluster maintenance mode.

However the biggest concern to bring to your attention is if you upgrade from VSA 1.0 to VSA 5.1 using the scripted installer (aka automated installer). Using VSA Automated Installer for upgrades is not supported and may lead to incorrect configurations or to data loss. The issue manifests itself if you do not have any powered on VMs on the VSA 1.0 datastores.  A workaround is to ensure that you have powered on Virtual Machines before attempting the upgrade. However, it is best not to use the automated installer for upgrades right now. A fix is in the works for this issue, and a new VSA 5.1 release should be available for download very shortly (next few days).

These restrictions are called out very clearly in both the download site and in the release notes. Please read them very carefully before attempting an upgrade.

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Published by Cormac

6 Replies to “Heads Up! VSA 5.1 Upgrade Issues”

  1. So, does this mean that if I have a 3 machine VSA cluster I will have to bring down the whole cluster to do the upgrgade? I was hoping to do it one machine at a time so that I could use vmotion to not have any downtime on my machines.

  2. What’s the workaround for when you upgrade VC to 5.1 and the ESXi hosts…and then try to upgrade VSA to 5.1 and fail? Right now, when I click on my VSA Manager tab…it gives me an error that the cluster is not available. I totally wiped out my VSA cluster and wanted to install it freshly again on different ESXi servers. Unfortunately, I can’t get the VSA wizard to allow me to do that. I’ve uninstalled the VSA Manager several times on my VC 5.1 Windows VM. The cleanup.bat didn’t help either.

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Post it up on the VSA section of the VMware communities Chris. Include the error and any appropriate logs. Not the easiest thing to troubleshoot via blog post comments 😉

  4. Pingback: vSphere 5.1 Link Documentação « Osvaldoneris's Blog

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