Upgradation of vSphere Replication 6.5 to versoin 8.1

• While upgrading vSphere replication in protected site thorugh VAMI console, it was failing with the below error.

• To fix this issue, we moved to alternate plan by deploying second appliance in vCenter server. But, when initiated the OVF deployment process, OVF deployment was stucking and failing with the error as attached below.

"Unable to Deploy OVF Template"

• Then we planned to deploy the OVF of vSphere Repliance Appliance using VMware OVF tool. And it was successfully completed. Follow below link to deploy OVF using VMware OVF Tool.

Deploy vSphere Replication 8.x using OVF Tool Edit this article

• After completing the deployment process, we powered on the new appliance. Open the console of the newly deployed vSphere Replication appliance, and it detected the existing appliance with the same name in the environment. There are three options as mentioned below.
• Continue
• Shutdown
• Upgrade
• We choosed Upgrade option to proceed further.

• Followed the process which worked perfectly. However, we faced couple of warning message in between the upgrade process which was related to Network and replication configuration. To fix those warnings, we added additional NIC for vSphere replication port same as old appliance. Once it was added, then network configuration warning was resolved. But replication configuration error was still there. So we ignored the error and moved further for task completion.

• Once upgrade process completed, then we noticed that old appliance was in power off state and new appliance was in place in working state. We logged into the VAMI console, and made the configuration for Storage replication to the second NIC which was defined for the vSphere replication network.

After doing all these things, our protected site is up and running perfectly. Now we need to perform the same at recovery site.