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Upgrade VMware Aria Operations for Logs

VMware Aria Operations for Logs provides intelligent log management for infrastructure and applications in any environment. This highly scalable log management solution delivers intuitive, actionable dashboards, sophisticated analytics, and broad third-party extensibility across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

When upgrading VMware Aria Operations for Logs, it is important to understand changes in component behavior for version 8.10 that can affect the upgrade process. Understanding changes from previous versions of VMware Aria Operations for Logs can help in your upgrade planning. For a complete list of new features in VMware Aria Operations for Logs 8.10, see the Release Notes for version 8.10 releases.

VMware Aria Operations for Logs is deployed as a cluster and activates real-time logging for all components in the solution. The vRealize Log Insight cluster consists of one primary node and two secondary nodes behind a load balancer. Configure the Integrated Load Balancer (ILB) on the three-node cluster so that all log sources can address the cluster by its ILB. By using the ILB, you do not need to reconfigure log sources with a new destination address in case of a scale-out or node failure. The ILB also guarantees that vRealize Log Insight accepts all incoming ingestion traffic.

Primary node – required initial node in the Cluster. The primary node is responsible for queries and log ingestion. The primary node web UI is the single pane of glass for that vRealize Log Insight Cluster. All queries against data are directed against the primary, which in turn distributes the workload to the workers.

Worker node – three nodes minimum are required to form a cluster with the ability to add more workers for scale-out. A worker node ingests logs and stores logs locally.

Integrated Load Balancer – provides high availability by using proprietary load-balancing configuration (no external load balancer required).

Prerequisites

The upgrade procedure for a VMware Aria Operations for Logs environment can be rather complex and may require careful planning. Determining the steps of the upgrade procedure depends on several factors, mainly

Product dependency: Please make sure below products are compatible with the current and target versions of VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle using VMware interoperability Matrix

VMware vCenter Server
VMware vSphere
VMware NSX
VMware Workspace One Access
VMware Aria Lifecycle (formerly VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager)
VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations)
VMware Aria Automation (formerly vRealize Automation)
VMware Cloud Director etc…

Note:- If you deployed and managing the VMware Aria Suite products by VMware Aria Lifecycle you can upgrade using the Lifecycle console which helps you to do the upgrade plan as well or you can upgrade manually and initiate an inventory sync in Lifecycle to get the Lifecycle Environment get updated.

Back up or take a snapshot of the source VMware Aria Operations for Logs appliances that you want to upgrade

Upgrade Path:  Please make sure we have an upgrade path available to the target version or we need to go with any interim versions using VMware interoperability Matrix

Obtain a copy of the vRealize Log Insight upgrade bundle .pak file for the release you are upgrading to.

Verify that you are logged in to the vRealize Log Insight web user interface as a Super Admin user, or a user associated with a role that has the relevant permissions

Make a note of any nodes you are upgrading that are in maintenance mode. When the upgrade is finished, you must move them from the state Connected to Maintenance mode

Upgrade Procedure

Currently I am running 8.6.2, I need to do an interim upgrade to 8.8.2 to reach the 8.10 target.

Download the required upgrade .pak file from My VMware and save the update package in your local disk

Note: – Upgrading vRealize Log Insight must be done from the primary node’s FQDN. Upgrading using the Integrated Load Balancer IP address is not supported. During upgrade, the primary node is upgraded first, and restarts. Each of the cluster nodes is upgraded sequentially.

Navigate to the Administration tab, Under Management, click Cluster.

Click Upgrade from PAK to upload the .pak file.

Accept the new EULA to complete the upgrade procedure.

After the primary node upgrade process is complete, you can view the remaining upgrade process, which is automatic

Note: – After upgrade, all nodes are brought online even if they were in maintenance mode before the upgrade. Move these nodes back to maintenance mode as needed.

Repeat the same step to upgrade from 8.8.2 to 8.10

Make sure all integrations are working and receiving logs from agent-based integrations also update if any content pack update is required

Make sure everything is working fine and delete the snapshots you made before the software update.

Note: – If the integrated load balancer is configured, its IPs are migrated among the cluster nodes so cluster services, including UI, API, and ingestion of incoming events, remain available throughout the rolling upgrade

If a problem is encountered affecting one or more of the nodes during the upgrade process, the entire cluster is rolled back to the original, working version. Because configuration changes performed after the upgrade started might be inconsistent or invalid, the configuration is reverted to a known-good state captured before upgrade. No ingested events are lost. Progress is written to the below file on each individual node. A system notification is sent when rollback finishes. After the issue is investigated and fixed, you can retry the upgrade.

/storage/core/loginsight/var/rollback.log 

Thanks,

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