Upgrading my View environment to 7.12

I use View to access my lab remotely for demo’s and doing articles.  And I have been doing that since before it was called View - remember VDM anyone?  I upgraded my home lab and kept track of how it went to be able to share.  So here we go.

I am upgrading a small lab, so not worried about downtime, but I want the least amount of work, and no re-work!  BTW, I took advantage of this outage to do the MS updates. This small lab is similar to what you might have if you have 50 or 60 VDI users so this upgrade info is useful for labs and small VDI environments.

Prerequisites

• Docs, Release Notes, Upgrade Guide
• Bits,
• Know what build you are at, for me I was at 7.11.0 build 15231595.
• You need to export your config from the UAG.  Very important as that makes this upgrade much easier! I take both the INI and JSON.
• Connect to your View environment and make sure it works, and check the events to make sure nothing odd.
• Backups are always good to have! I am backing up my UAG, Connection Server, templates for the pools, and my own desktop.
• I like to upgrade my client to the latest before I start testing the update.  In this case for my macOS client that is 5.4.
• I only use VMware Tools from the ESXi host, meaning I do not download it and install it so I should have no issues as a result of that.

Process - Connection Servers

Don’t start this section until you have a good backup of the View infrastructure, and your exported config of the UAG.

• Connect to the Connection Server (CS) console.
• I do MS updates. It really takes a while.
• Install the upgrade.  It will be like an upgrade because it is so not many questions at all! However, it is a little weird as it removes a bunch of files.  But it still works!
• The file to use is: VMware-Horizon-Connection-Server-x86_64-7.12.0-15805436.exe.

It went very smooth and required no restart. But I do restart it anyway as that solved a problem long ago.

I check the UI to make sure it is running before I continue. And it is working and I do love the HTML5 admin UI. I also confirm it is at 7.12.

Process - UAG

So there is no nice way to do an update of the UAG. You delete the old one - after you export the config - then install a new one and import the config.  I do hope it gets better in the future - this is not the kind of update I would like to do at an enterprise.

• We have done our export of the configuration, and have both a JSON and an INI file.
• Now power off and delete your UAG (we have a backup if we need it - right?)
• Deploy a new UAG with the same config as previously.  Meaning number of network cards, networks, and IP, and where it is deployed too. When it boots don’t worry about the A newer version of VMware Tools is available as it will be managed.
• When the deployment is finished connect with the UAG and you should be prompted to change the password.
• once the password is changed, you can log in.
• The first thing you do is import the JSON file you exported.
• At this point I log out and continue.

Process - View desktop Agent

I had hopped to be able to connect in via View, and upgrade the agent on my desktop.  But that was once again blocked.  So I had to connect via the vSphere console.  The upgrade was mostly smooth and did require a restart. I was prompted that some files I did not recognize were in use and I said to ignore (after I tried retry with no luck) - I had to say ignore twice to get through.

The file you should be using is VMware-Horizon-Agent-x86_64-7.12.0-15805436.

Upgrading the template was easy and as expected, smooth.  Not sure how I would update numbers of persistent desktop but I guess & hope that I had access to software distribution tools or maybe use AD?  I think maybe doing it to the machine via AD might mean it would be done without user input but, would it still fail with a warning?  If anyone knows that would be great to hear about.

BTW, check out the custom option when installing the agent as it installs a variety of things - including the vR Ops bit too which is good.

Process  - Clients

You can find the clients here but the built in method of updates keep my Mac client updated.  I used my Apple OS X client to connect with no issue.

Testing

After I finished the CS, UAG and desktop agent updated I started testing.

• I connected from my Mac to my desktop without issue. This was done inside the lab.
• I connecte from my iPad to my desktop without issue.  This was done outside the lab.
• I logged into the Admin UI and checked the events to see if there was any errors. All looked good.

Things to Note

• I am frustrated that I cannot upgrade a View agent while in a View session.  I know that it used to let you do it and it was very handy - I have done upgrades using View of View before and found it very useful. Especially when working remote from my lab.
• I would like to see in a blog or the docs how to do a update of the View agent using some common methodology like AD.  As an example for people.

Conclusion

All good.  So quick and easy!  Literally the MS update of the one View server took longer then this upgrade.  So I am now current on View and that helps me be ready for vSphere 7 (I think).

Questions or comments always welcome!

Michael

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