Specifications

2 Make sure that the new appliance has at least the same amount of RAM and number of CPUs as the old
appliance.
3 If you added additional disks or increased the size of the VMDKs of the old appliance, reconfigure the
new appliance to have at least the same disk space as the old appliance.
4 Connect to both the old and new appliances in separate browser windows.
5 In the new appliance, in the vCenter Server Setup wizard, accept the end user license agreement.
The wizard is started automatically on first login. On subsequent logins, you can start the wizard
manually, by clicking the Launch button in the Utilities section of the startup page.
6 In the new appliance, in the Configure Options panel, select Upgrade from previous version.
7 In the new appliance, click Next.
8 If you are upgrading from version 5.0.x: in the old appliance, in the Upgrade tab, select source for the
appliance role, and click Set role.
9 In the new appliance, copy the local appliance key.
10 Import the key that you copied in the previous step into the old appliance.
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If you are upgrading from version 5.0.x: in the old appliance, go to the Upgrade tab, Establish
Trust subtab. Paste the key into the Remote Appliance Key field and click Import remote key.
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If you are upgrading from version 5.1.x: in the old appliance, paste the key into the Upgrade key
box, and click Import key and stop vCenter Server.
11 In the old appliance, copy the local appliance key.
12 In the new appliance, paste the key that you copied in the previous step into the Upgrade key box and
click Next.
The setup performs a check on the SSL certificate of the old appliance. If problems are found, the Setup
wizard displays a panel that explains the problem and provides an option to generate a new self-signed
certificate for the new appliance.
13 If you want to keep the current certificate and manually correct any resulting problems, uncheck the
checkbox Replace the vCenter SSL certificate.
If you are upgrading from a version 5.1.x appliance, the existing Single Sign-On configuration will be
used for the upgraded appliance. Proceed to Step 15. If you are upgrading from a version 5.0 appliance,
the wizard displays the SSO Settings panel.
14 If you are upgrading from a version 5.0 appliance, in the SSO settings panel, choose whether to use an
external instance of Single Sign-On, or the embedded version.
If you choose an external Single Sign-On instance, a check is performed to ensure that the external
Single Sign-On version is 5.5. If the version is earlier than 5.5, an error message is displayed and the
upgrade will not proceed.
15 In the new appliance, click Next.
16 Review the list of hosts managed by the source appliance and select the hosts on which to run pre-
upgrade checks.
To minimize the chance of problems with the upgrade, run the pre-upgrade checks on all hosts, or at
least on the most important hosts.
17 Review the pre-upgrade check of the source appliance hosts and correct any errors before proceeding.
Chapter 4 Upgrading vCenter Server
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