With the release of VMware 6.5(u1), lot of customers upgrade or migrate their vCenter to 6.5(u1) from older version such as vSphere 5.5 or 6.0. In this topic, I’ll show you how to upgrade VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) 5.5 to vCSA 6.5. To follow this topic, you need to download the vCSA 6.5(u1) from VMware. Then mount the ISO on a machine. From my side, I have mounted the ISO on my laptop running on Windows 10 1607.

The VMware vCSA upgrade is done in 2 steps:

The vCSA deployment

The data migration from source to destination

Before beginning you need the following:

A new name for the new VM or rename the old vCenter VM Name with _old prefix for example

A temporary IP address

Enough storage for the appliance

Enough compute resources to run the appliance

Step 1: Deploy a new appliance

Once you have mounted the ISO, open <ISO Drive Letter>\vcsa-ui-installer\win32\installer.exe. Then choose Upgrade.





The next screen introduces the steps to follow to upgrade your appliance from vCSA 5.5 or 6.0 to vCSA 6.5u1. Just click on Next.





Once the next screen, just accept the license agreement and lick on Next.





In the next window, specify the vCenter FQDN or IP address and password to connect to. Then specify the ESXi name which hosts the vCenter Appliance. I specify the ESXi instead of the vCenter because I want to upgrade this vCenter server. When the upgrade will occur, the current vCSA will be shutdown.





Then choose the deployment type and click on next.





Then specify an ESXi or vCenter name. Because I migrate the only one vCenter I have, I choose to specify the ESXi name and credentials to connect to.





Next choose a destination VM folder and click on Next.





Then choose an ESXi in the list.





Next specify a VM name and the root password for the target vCSA.





In the next window, regarding your needs, choose the right appliance size. In the table, you have information about supported number of hosts and VMs.





Next choose the datastore where you want to store the vCSA VM file. You can also deploy the appliance in thin provisioning.





Next specify the temporary IP address. This IP is used only during the data migration step.





In the next screen, you can review the settings you apply previously. When you have reviewed the settings just click on Finish to run the vCSA deployment.









Once the appliance deployment is finished, you can click on continue to process the step 2.





Step 2: Migrate configuration for vCSA 5.5 to vCSA 6.5

The next screen introduces the step2 which consists of copying data from source vCenter Server Appliance to the new appliance.





The next step runs some verifications to check if the configuration can be migrated. For example, in the below screenshot is indicated that a plugin cannot be migrated and to check if DRS is not enabled on the ESXi which host the new appliance. If the DRS is enabled, the new appliance can be migrated and so the wizard will be not able to contact this VM anymore (we have specified the ESXi in step 1).





In the screen, the wizard asks you which data you want to migrate.





Then you can choose to join the CEIP or not.





Next you can review the settings before run the data copies. To run the migration, just click on Finish.









Once the migration is finished, you can connect to the vCenter by using the web client and enjoy the new web interface (either flash or html). The source appliance should be shutdown.







