When it comes to upgrading your vSphere environment you have two options when upgrading to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7. The installer provides two methods, the first being the UI Installer and the second being the CLI installer. As I travel and present to folks, I often ask who prefers to use the CLI method and there is usually less than 10% of the room which raises their hands. When asked why not?, people tend to think its “scary” or do not fully understand the benefits of these scripted methods. With this blog series “Automating your vSphere Upgrade”, we will follow the same upgrade paths that my colleague Nigel Hickey covered with his vSphere Upgrade blog series. His series covers the steps it takes to Prepare for your Upgrade and How to Upgrade vCenter Server, ESXi Hosts, VM Tools/Compatibility, VMFS and VDS through the UI methods.

With vSphere 5.5 being EOGS on September 19th, quite a few people have made the jump to vSphere 6.0 and 6.5 and with folks getting ready to upgrade to vSphere 6.7 Update 1 this might be a good time to start getting ready to Automate Your Upgrade!

Introduction

This series is geared towards the more advanced administrator who may want to automate the upgrade of their vSphere Environment. Using built-in CLI based tools and PowerCLI we will automate our vSphere Upgrade Process

As we can see from the graphic above the steps we will take to upgrade our vSphere Environment will be:

Conclusion

Automating your vSphere Upgrade does not have to be scary or complicated. With the right knowledge it can be quite easy and save you a bit of time! With the Automating Your vSphere Upgrade blog series we will cover benefits of why utilizing CLI Installers and PowerCLI can simplify our vSphere Upgrade.