Intro
I’ll confess I don’t recall ever patching a vCenter in this way before but since I’ve been doing design and build work now for nearly 15 years it’s not surprising that normal BAU work has eluded me.
The Steps
The first step before is obviously to acquire the patch to do so go to the following URL https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/patch then login with your my.vmware account.
Now change the search to VC and the version you currently have.
This will then show you the available patches then simply click Download.
The next step is to backup the vCenter for details on how to do this you can follow my blog post here https://vdives.com/2019/11/21/configure-vcenter-backup/
Once you have completed the backup and have the patch file downloaded go ahead and upload it to a datastore that the vCenter can access.
Then Edit the vCenter VM and attach the patch ISO to the CDROM drive.
Next login to the vCenter Appliance web portal.
To do this enter the FQDN or IP followed by :5480 in my lab thats.
https://vcenter1.lab.local:5480
Once logged in to to Upgrade then hit the Check Updates drop down menu and select ‘Check CD ROM’
The available update will show in the bottom part of the screen.
Now click ‘RUN PRE-UPDATE CHECKS’
If you run into the issue below where the OS Root password has expired then follow my blog post https://vdives.com/2019/11/21/appliance-os-root-password-expired/ to resolve the issue then re-run the check.
Once you have a status of Passed you can click on ‘STAGE AND INSTALL’
Accept the License Agreement.
Join or not the CEIP 😉
Now tick to confirm you have run a backup or go to Backups to run one then click ‘Finish’
The installation will start after it progresses it will disconnect you from the web console. Now you’ll need to wait until you are able to log back in again.
Unfortunately there is no obvious way to tell when the patch is finished.
If you open the console for the VC you can see the updated version number however this does not necessarily mean you log back in again at this stage.
Eventually after an hour or so you will be able to log back into the vCenter vSphere Web client, to confirm the version Select the vCenter and go to the summary screen and check the Version Informatio
You can also log back into the Web Appliance UI go to the Upgrade screen again and see the Current Version details.
