In the first part of this post, I detailed the notes that I took while upgrading my VMware View 5.0.1 environment to 5.1.  I also mentioned some of the preparations that one should make before carrying out the upgrade.  In this post, I’ll write about the rest of the upgrade process that I followed and also mention some post upgrade considerations.  So here goes:

Security Server Upgrade:

  • If there are any security servers to upgrade, first check and verify the prerequisites.  This upgrade is relatively easier as a security server is essentially a subset of a connection server so there isn’t much to do, apart from running the installer and going through the defaults.
  • Check if Windows Firewall with Advanced Security is set to “On” for all profiles.
  • If IPSec is being used between the security and connection servers then hopefully, pairing with their respective connection server is already broken by selecting the option “Prepare for Upgrade or Reinstallation”.  Just confirm to see if that is the case.
  • Once everything is checked, run the installer.  The process detects the previous installation and adjusts the installation process accordingly.
  • After the upgrade, verify the version number.  It should be: Version 5.1.0 (704644).
  • Also, check View Configuration -> Servers -> Security Servers to verify that there are no duplicate servers.  In an upgrade scenario, it is possible to end up with duplicates.  If so, select and remove the duplicate entries.

View Composer Upgrade:

  • Check the vCenter server to see if all prerequisites are in place for a View Composer upgrade.  As View Composer can now be installed separately, this is a good time to check if it should be done now or later i.e. after the upgrade.
  • Make sure that all provisioning and recomposing operations are disabled and everyone concerned is aware that they shouldn’t be running during the upgrade process.
  • Announce downtime for the vCenter server (if Composer is being upgraded in-place i.e. is on the same server) as the server will require a reboot after upgrade.
  • Locate and run the View Composer 3.0 installer (VMware-viewcomposer-3.0.0-691993.exe).  Be patient as it takes some time for the installer to come up with the welcome screen and ready itself.  Click “Next” when the button becomes enabled.
  • Click “Next” on the EULA screen.
  • On the “Destination Folder” screen, accept the default if acceptable.  Otherwise, change it to something suitable.  Click “Next” to continue.
  • On the “Database Information” screen, choose the right database connection by clicking “ODBC DSN Setup…”  If the connection was previously set to accept Windows Authentication then click “Next”.  Otherwise, do so after entering the correct username and password for it.
  • On the “Database Upgrade Warning”, keep the “Yes, I want to upgrade my VMware View Composer Database”.  Make sure you had a good backup before running the upgrade.  Click “Next” to continue.
  • On “VMware View Composer Port Settings”, keep the defaults (unless there is a reason to change them) and click “Next” to continue.
  • At this point, the program is ready to upgrade View Composer.  Click “Install” to proceed with the upgrade process.  The upgrade takes a few minutes.  Click “Finish” to complete the upgrade process.
  • Reboot the server for the changes to take effect.
  • Log into the View Connection Server as admin.  On the “Dashboard”, click on “View Composer Servers” and select the entry that corresponds to the server that was just upgraded.   Doing so should bring up the details for the server, showing a warning message about having an “Untrusted Certificate”.  If the plan is to install a trusted certificate, then don’t click “Verify”.  Otherwise, click it.  A box comes up, announcing that the certificate is invalid and clicking “View Certificate…” reveals more information.  Click “Accept” at the bottom to accept the self-signed certificate as being valid.  Doing that should turn the View Composer server icon into green and the updated information should be displayed i.e. Version 3.0.0.5518 and Build number 691993 etc.  Click “OK” and then refresh the dashboard to display the latest information.  (Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a way to verify the certificate for the connection server, which is why it still shows as red in my setup).

Post-Upgrade steps:

  • The next step should be to upgrade the View Agents within the base images and “recompose” to upgrade the agents on client machines.  Alternatively, other methods can be used to deploy the upgraded agent.
  • If there are any Transfer servers in the environment, upgrade them too, following a process similar to connection servers.
  • Test the end-to-end process by deploying all kinds of desktop in your environment as a test.
  • If the ESX and vCenter servers are running an older version and require upgrading, this would be a good time to do that.
  • Upgrade all installations of View Clients everywhere.

Well, that was my upgrade process which seems to be working OK and I haven’t seen any problems yet.  It would be good to get feedback on how well your upgrade went and if this process was useful.

Hope this helps!