VMware Aria Automation
stages in
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
workflow

There are three stages in the upgrade process of vRealize Automation 8.x or
VMware Aria Automation
within the
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
workflow.
Stage of upgrade
Description
Preparation
The preparation phase verifies that the system is healthy and shuts down services to make sure that all data is persisted.
Snapshot creation
Snapshots are taken for an automated, faster recovery of failures.
Upgrade
The upgrade utility is run.
For certain failure events, the
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
upgrade workflow provides options to either finish the upgrade successfully or revert to the stage before upgrade.
  • The upgrade process starts with a status check task that verifies the current state of the VA. If the system already has an upgrade request due to a previous upgrade attempt, then
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    provides an option to clean the older states and start a new upgrade. You can see the status task failing with a retry parameter similar to a
    cancelAndStartAfresh
    statement. Setting this retry parameter to true cleans up older states and restarts the upgrade.
  • If failures occur during the preparation phase, you can cancel the upgrade process. If a failure cannot be corrected, or if the failure is fixed manually outside of the upgrade tool, you can proceed to the next phase in the upgrade workflow. The status provided after a preparation phase failure provides two retry parameter options. If you set the
    cancelAndStartAfresh
    option to
    true
    , the upgrade process is cancelled and the system reverts to its pre-upgrade state. If you set the
    proceedNext
    option to
    true
    , the
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    upgrade proceeds to the next stage.
  • The upgrade workflow consists of VM operations such as reverting or deleting a snapshot and VM shutdown, power ON, and so on. If a failure occurs, a
    Skip
    option can be used if the retry option in
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    does not help and when you manually perform the same operation directly in
    vCenter
    .
  • The final phase of the upgrade can be successful, can succeed with warnings, or can fail.
    • Success with warnings indicates that the upgrade has completed successfully, but a minor error is detected. You can check the errors and rectify them. You can set the
      succeedUpgradeRequest
      retry parameter to
      true
      to complete the
      VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
      upgrade workflow.
    • If upgrade fails, you can decide if you want to revert the snapshot and retry the upgrade or cancel the whole upgrade process. You can revert and delete the snapshot, cancel the current upgrade request, and move the system to a state before the upgrade started.
      • For an upgrade failure, you can see the status task after the upgrade failure with retry parameters similar to
        revertSnapshotNRetryUpgrade
        and
        cancelUpgradeNRevertBack
        . If you set
        revertSnapshotNRetryUpgrade
        to true, the upgrade utility revert the snapshot and you can retry the upgrade.
      • If you set
        cancelUpgradeNRevertBack
        to
        true
        , you can cancel the upgrade process, which can revert and delete the snapshot, cancel the current upgrade request, and move the system to a pre-upgrade state.
  • The
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    upgrade workflow does not support removing snapshots if there is a successful upgrade. You can keep the snapshots or remove them manually from the
    vCenter
    .
  • If you cancel the upgrade process after a post preparation or upgrade phase failure, the upgrade workflow from
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    is stopped. In such situations, restart the upgrade process by using options on the
    Manager Environment
    page.
  • You can enable the multi-tenancy for
    VMware Aria Automation
    , refer to Tenant management in VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.
  • If the
    VMware Aria Automation
    upgrade fails, you must cancel upgrade or revert a snapshot, and then retry to upgrade through
    VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
    . If you revert the snapshot manually in a
    vCenter
    ,
    VMware Aria Automation
    goes into an inconsistent state.
  • For
    VMware Aria Automation
    , if you cancel upgrade or revert a snapshot, and then retry upgrade, ensure that you create a support bundle that contains the log files for any future analysis and reference.