5.5

Displaying the Maintenance Message During an Upgrade
If you anticipate a lengthy upgrade process and want to have the system display a maintenance message
while the upgrade is underway, verify that at least one cell remains accessible while the others are being
upgraded. Run the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/vmware-vcd-cell command on that cell to turn on the
cell maintenance message.
[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./vmware-vcd-cell maintenance
You can run this command on a cell before or after it is upgraded. When you are ready to upgrade the cell
or return an upgraded cell to service, run the following command on the cell to turn off the maintenance
message.
[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./vmware-vcd-cell stop
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Use the Cell Management Tool to Quiesce and Shut Down a Server,” on page 35
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“Upgrade vCloud Director Software on Any Member of a Server Group,” on page 36
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“Upgrade the vCloud Director Database,” on page 38
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“Upgrade vShield Manager,” on page 40
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“Upgrade vCenter, Hosts, and vShield Edge Appliances,” on page 40
Use the Cell Management Tool to Quiesce and Shut Down a Server
Before you upgrade a vCloud Director server, use the cell management tool to quiesce and shut down
vCloud Director services on the server's cell.
vCloud Director creates a task object to track and manage each asynchronous operation that a user requests.
Information about all running and recently completed tasks is stored in the vCloud Director database.
Because a database upgrade invalidates this task information, you must be sure that no tasks are running
when you begin the upgrade process.
With the cell management tool, you can suspend the task scheduler so that new tasks cannot be started, then
check the status of all active tasks. You can wait for running tasks to finish or log in to vCloud Director as a
system administrator and cancel them. See Chapter 5, “Cell Management Tool Reference,” on page 47.
When no tasks are running, you can use the cell management tool to stop vCloud Director services.
Prerequisites
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Verify that you have superuser credentials for the target server.
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Verify that you have vCloud Director system administrator credentials.
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If this cell will be accessible to vCloud Director clients while it is being upgraded, use
the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/vmware-vcd-cell command to turn on the cell maintenance
message.
[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./vmware-vcd-cell maintenance
This command causes the cell to respond to all requests with a maintenance message. If you use a load
balancer or similar tool to make the cell inaccessible during the upgrade, you do not need to to turn on
the cell maintenance message.
Procedure
1 Log in to the target server as root.
Chapter 3 Upgrading vCloud Director
VMware, Inc. 35