5.1

VMware View Upgrade Overview 2
Upgrading an enterprise VMware View deployment involves several high-level tasks. Upgrading is a
multistage process in which procedures must be performed in a particular order.
During an upgrade to View 5.1, View does not support View Composer provisioning and maintenance
operations, local mode operations, or View Transfer Server publish operations. Operations such as
provisioning and recomposing linked-clone desktops, checking out or checking in desktops, and publishing
View Composer base images are not supported during the transitional period when any View servers are still
running the earlier version. You can successfully perform these operations only when all instances of View
Connection Server, View Composer, and View Transfer Server have been upgraded to View 5.1.
You must complete the upgrade process in a specific order. Order is also important within each upgrade stage.
NOTE This overview relates to upgrades for major, minor, and maintenance releases. For information about
patches, see Chapter 8, “Applying VMware View Patches,” on page 53.
How many of the following tasks you need to complete depends on which components of VMware View you
use in your deployment.
1 On the physical or virtual machines that host View Connection Server instances, make backups and record
various configuration and system settings. See “Preparing View Connection Server for an Upgrade,” on
page 21.
2 On the physical or virtual machines that host View Composer and vCenter Server, make backups and
temporarily halt certain scheduled tasks. See “Preparing vCenter Server and View Composer for an
Upgrade,” on page 23.
For details about which versions of VMware View are compatible with which versions of vCenter Server
and ESX/ESXi, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php.
3 If you use View 5.1 security servers, perform the tasks in “Prepare to Upgrade or Reinstall a Security
Server,” on page 22.
4 Upgrade View Connection Server on the existing host or migrate to a new machine. See “Upgrade View
Connection Servers in a Replicated Group,” on page 25.
IMPORTANT After you upgrade a View Connection Server instance to View 5.1, you cannot downgrade
that instance to an earlier version. After you upgrade all View Connection Server instances in a replicated
group, you cannot add another instance that runs an earlier version of View.
5 If you use View security servers, upgrade to 5.1, see “Upgrade View Security Server,” on page 30.
6 Upgrade View Composer on an existing Windows Server 2008 host or, if you are running View Composer
2.6 on Windows Server 2003, migrate to a new machine. See “Upgrade View Composer,” on page 31.
VMware, Inc.
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