Upgrade Aria Automation (vRA) using LCM
One of the issues that I see the most with clients is old versions of Automation that are not updated. The reasons vary between customers, but they boil down to two main issues:
no time, personnel, and or no knowhow to do the upgrade
fear that the update will destroy production
This post is mostly done to address the first issue; however, I will touch on the second one.
Let me start with why it is important to upgrade Automation. Aria Automation is a product that is designed to be used by users to automate the deployment life cycle as well as 2nd-day operations, or any other kind of automation for that matter; therefore, it is exposed (in regards to network accessibility) to a wider range which increases the attack surface for hackers. We have seen in the past (remember the massive 9.8 in December 2021) that vulnerabilities of products will be exploited very fast. If you do your automation correctly, Aria Automation has a wide range of access to a lot of other Systems, starting with vCenter and maybe going all the way to your Cloud accounts. As it has mostly enough rights to create and destroy VMs, a hacker can cause quite some havoc. If a vulnerability is found, it is important to assess the risk and upgrade/Patch as required. If you haven’t done so yet, consider signing up for security update emails from VMware at https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories.html . This service will send you an email when a vulnerability is found.
However, regular updates should be done as it is sometimes hard to get from a VERY old version to the newest. There is that belief that one should be one feature version below the current one. That may be true with vCenter but not so true for Aria Automation and Orchestrator. There hasn’t been a devastating bug in 8 (some small issues, but nothing really that brought down production). Yes, some little flukes, but nothing as serious as vCenter 7U3.
Before updating, I would strongly recommend reading the release notes that are published on VMware. There have been some renamings and reshufflings of menus in the past, and of this writing (8.12), the landing page has been rearranged and menu points renamed. So it’s good to keep up with the changes.
And here we come to the issue of no time. The whole update of Aria Automation takes about 45 minutes (depending on download speed for LCM), and it can be split down into three main parts. The full downtime of Automation should not exceed more than 30 minutes (in my experience).
Upgrade LCM (can be done ANYTIME and dosnt’t require many clicks)
download the new Automation update in LCM (can be done ANYTIME and is more or less three clicks)
Update Automation. This is the only thing that can impact users, as it will bring the site down for around 30 min. But also, this can be done rather easily, and updates are not that often.
So I hope this helps a bit in de-mystifying Automation upgrades and understanding the need to be up-to-date.
The following section is in what I like to call “comic style” and shows the steps with the relevant screenshots.
Upgrade LCM
1) in vCenter create a new SnapShot of the LCM VM, without memory.
3) In LCM we have two places to check if there is an LCM update. Without an LCM update, you won’t be able to download a newer image. First we check System Upgrade.
2) login to LCM with admin@local
4) In System Upgrade, Click on Check for Upgrade. If you see a message that there is no update (or the red error band with no content, as seen above), then there is nothing for you to do; skip to the next step. If there is an upgrade, an Apply Update button will appear. Click this, The update will install, and LCM will reboot. Repeat this step to be sure there is no additional upgrade.
5) Next, we check the Product Support Pack. Even if there was an update of LCM, there could also be a Product Support Pack. Click on Check Support Pack Online and then on the Click here.
6) Wait until LCM has finished downloading the update registry
7) There could be a list of updates. Use the latest update and check that the version you are looking for. Click on Apply Version
8) click the box to confirm you have made a snapshot. After clicking on submit, it might take 2-5 minutes for the update process to start. Just wait. The LCM will reboot. After reboot login again.
9) In the Settings menu, click on Binary Mapping. Click on Add Binaries
10) Click on MyVMware and then Discover. It might take a few minutes for the images to appear. Look for the software and the version number you want, and make sure you have selected the upgrade image. Then click Add.
11) Click on Requests and wait until the image has been downloaded. This can take a while as the images are mostly around 2.5GB.
Updating Aria Automation (vRA) using LCM
Before updating, I strongly recommend reading the Release Notes online for this version.
You don’t have to take additional snapshots, as the update process will do this for you
1) Click on Enviroments and then select View Details from the Automation.
2) click on Upgrade
3) click on Trigger Inventory Sync
4) The Sync makes sure that the current inventory in LCM is correct and working. It checks that all logins, etc. are fine and working.
Click on Submit
5) Wait till the Sync has finished. This might take a moment.
6) After the sync has finished, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3. You will again see the Trigger Inventory Sync. This time, click on Proceed
7) This screen shows you an overview of the version you would like to go to, as well as giving you the option to choose another repository. If unsure, you can check the Compatibility Matrix. Click on Next
8) Ticking the option of auto-revert is recommended HOWEVER, if you had a failed update, it might be good to try again without this tick as you then could do some log checking. Click Next
9) Click on Run Precheck. In the popup window, tick the checkbox. You can check the hardware requirements if you like. Click on Run Precheck.
10) The pre-check should normally show a green tick; however, as an example, here, the Pre-check has issues that I set the password of root never to expire. You can click on the VIEW next to it to see more information about the issue as well as recommendations on how to resolve it. In this case, It says that the new policy of VMware is to set root to 365d expiry and that this update will do this for you. So we can click next
11) after the Summary page, we can start the update. The update (especially Stage 2) will take at least 20 to 30 minutes, and the green lines will go back and forward multiple times. Just be patient,
12) After the update has finished, go to the vRA page and check that you see the new version as well as that everything works,
Conclusion
I hope this brings home why it’s important to Update. It should showcase that it’s easy to break it up into three parts and isn’t too painful to do so.
Unfortunately, the pain of not upgrading can be felt in a company’s bottom line, harder than the cost of the person doing it ( even if its overtime)
