Upgrade vCenter operations manager to vRealize operations manager (vCops 2 vRops)

How to upgrade your vCops to vRops

When you are still running vCOPS 5.8 then at some point you will need to upgrade to vRealize operations manager 6.  Here is how you do it.

first download your ova file from vmware and then deploy the OVA file.  First you will have to accept the “end user License Agreement” and in the next step you can select a name and datacenter you want to deploy in. I left the name as default but maybe you want to give it another name thats up to you to decide.

Then you need to choose your correct configuration. Select what best fit your environment. for the most of you a small deployment will be enough. there is also an option to have remote collectors in different datacenter or maybe with external customers running vSphere 5.x.

After that its just selecting your cluster to deploy in, your resources pool, the correct datastore and the disk format. for now I have selected thin format in my lab but you can choose what best fits your environment.  VMware recommends thick eager zeroed for production environments.

 

Configure the network mapping and select your management network as destination network

The last step before finishing are the network properties. Fill in your gateway, dns servers, ip address and subnetmask that the appliance will use or leave it blank if your working with DCHP. a remark I came across deployment. if you fill in the wrong ip address yo can change it later in the settings. but most of the time that didn’t work for me, so I just redeployed the OVA file and filled in the correct ip address and it worked.

Finally you can click finish and the appliance will be deployed. it will take a few minutes to deploy depending what configuration you chosen

Now lets start the appliance and navigate with a browser to the ip address you assigned to it. https://ip address>.
As you can see you have 3 choices,  select New installation to migrate you existing vCops.

In the first screen you see an overview what steps will be done. In the future you can even add more nodes to collect all your metrics in very large environments

So next is setting your password. make sure its strong and long enough. in step 3 you can choose for a default certificate or you can install new one. for now im using the default certificate. In step 4 you have to give a name for your “Cluster Master Node” (chose wisely).

Now your ready to finish configuring your first Node. you will be automatically redirected to the administration page.

For now nothing is happening so you will have to click the “Start vRealize Operations Manager” button.

Again this will take a few minutes.

Congrats!! you can now start with vRealize operations manager.  not yet but almost there. log in with the admin user and password you set in step 2.

You have 2 options at the first screen. if you want to start fresh just select “New Environment” but we want to migrate our vCops appliance so select “Import Environment” for now

Step 2 : Accept the EULA
Step 3 : Enter your license key
Step 4 will allow you to set up the source to import th data. So fill in your vCops ip address or hostname and the password of your vCops admin user. (make sure you know that password. if not then you need to reset first.) Click OK on the warning, and accept the Certificate.

Once the source is added (this will take again a few minutes depending how large your data is on the source.) you will see an overview how much data will be transferred.

Click next and in step 5 check if you have any errors.  you might have few warnings if you are using other solutions like hyperic etc.. you can ignore the warnings and add solutions later.

You are now ready to complete your configuration and start importing data from vCops.

The import data can take up from few minutes to hours depending how much data there needs to be transferred from vCops. As you can see in the screenshot below, it took an hour in my environment.

After the data is imported into the vRops you can safely turn off the vCops appliance or keep it running next to it for few days.

Also you might not see the plug-in in the vi Client or the Web Client.  therefore you need to register the vRops with the vCenter. so i would recommend to edit the vCenter adapter. rename it and check test the connection with the correct credentials.  there is a button where you can manage registrations.  The procedure is to unregister the vCenter, wait 2 to 3 minutes and then re register the vCenter.

That’s it. pretty simple.