6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Upgrading the
vCenter Server Appliance and
Platform Services Controller
Appliance 2
You can upgrade the vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 or 6.0 and the Platform Services Controller appliance
6.0 to version 6.5. All of the installation files that are necessary for the upgrade are included in the
vCenter Server Appliance installer, which you can download from the VMware Web site.
The upgrade of the vCenter Server Appliance or Platform Services Controller appliance is a migration of
the old version to the new version, which includes deploying a new appliance of version 6.5. You can
deploy the new appliance on an ESXi host 5.5 or later, or on the inventory of a vCenter Server instance
5.5 or later. You assign a temporary IP address to the new appliance to facilitate the configuration and
services data migration from the old appliance to the newly deployed appliance. After the migration, the
IP address and host name of the old appliance are applied to the new upgraded appliance of version 6.5.
At the end of the upgrade, the temporary IP address is released and the old appliance is powered off.
Version 6.5 of the vCenter Server Appliance uses the embedded PostgreSQL database. If you are
upgrading a vCenter Server Appliance that is using an external database, the external database will be
migrated to the embedded PostgreSQL database of the new upgraded appliance. During the upgrade,
you must select a storage size for the new appliance that is suitable for the database size.
Version 6.5 of the vCenter Server Appliance uses the embedded VMware vSphere Update Manager
Extension service. If you are upgrading a vCenter Server Appliance that is using an external VMware
Update Manager instance, the external VMware Update Manager instance will be migrated to the
embedded VMware vSphere Update Manager Extension of the new upgraded appliance. The embedded
VMware vSphere Update Manager Extension uses the embedded PostgreSQL database. Before the
upgrade, you must run the Migration Assistant on the source VMware Update Manager instance.
For information about the software included in the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5, see vSphere Installation
and Setup.
Important For topologies with external Platform Services Controller instances, you must upgrade the
replicating Platform Services Controller instances in a sequence. After the successful upgrade of all
Platform Services Controller instances in the domain, you can perform concurrent upgrades of multiple
vCenter Server appliances that point to a common external Platform Services Controller instance.
VMware, Inc.
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