In this article I am updating my vCenter 7 install to 7u1.

As long as vCenter has access to the Internet and the Update Service is running then you will be notified of a pending update in a number of ways. Below you can see that on logging into the web client a vCenter update is available.

As always it is a good idea to backup vCenter and any components that you intend to upgrade. I also take a snapshot of vCenter before beginning.

Update Process

Clicking on view updates takes you to the Update Planner page where the available updates are listed. Below you can see that there are two updates shown in my instance. You can click on these and from the Generate Report section run either Pre-Update Checks or Interoperability. Notice the links that take you to the Release Notes for the particular release.

I am running Pre-Update Checks on the newer of the two updates (7u1c). The checks will take a few moments and any issues will be flagged. In my case all is well. You can export the report if required.

Clicking Open Appliance Management opens the VAMI interface for vCenter. Log in as Root. Under Update you will see the available updates. Again I am dropping down the options for the newer of the two available to me. Information regarding the update is shown:

Now Click Run Pre-Update-Checks to set off a check. Notice the notification that all updates and patches are cumulative. So I am good to apply this update and be confident I will have all previous patches applied. The pre-check takes a few minutes.

After the pre-check is complete you will see whether or not it has passed. If not review the reasons why not and resolve. Now that in my case it has passed I can see that the update will take approx. 104 minutes (in reality it was less than 15 minutes). There are two links enabled; Stage Only and Stage and Install. I click on Stage Only as I want to download the update ahead of time and choose the time to start the update.

Depending on your internet connection and the size of the update this may take some time to download.

Once the update is downloaded there is now a Install button and Unstage should you wish to delete the update file. Ensure that you have your backups and snapshots in place before clicking Install to start the ppdate.

Running the Update

Now the update begins. The first screen presents the EULA which you must agree to in order to proceed

Agreeing to the EULA and clicking Next kicks off more Pre-Update checks.

Once these complete you are now prompted to enter your SSO administrator password. Click Next

A warning is presented about vCenter backups. There is a link that takes you to the file based backup in order to run this if you haven’t already. In my case I have so I tick the box and click Finish.

The update proceeds and will show you progress.

As stated earlier the update only took around 20 minutes. Click Close and log back into vCenter to check that the build number has been updated.