VMM 2008 R2 Upgrade Guide

As part of the VMM 2008 R2 launch, I'm inviting my colleague, Kerim, to provide you some information on how you can upgrade your existing VMM 2008 / VMM 2008 R2 RC versions to the VMM 2008 R2 RTM version. Here comes Kerim:

 

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Hi everyone,

 

My name is Kerim Hanif. I am a program manager here at VMM product team, today I want to explain the paths you can upgrade to VMM 2008 R2 RTM. The purpose of this blog is to give you a general idea on how the upgrade works, for more detailed information please see the VMM 2008 R2 Deployment Guide in VMM TechNet https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139191

Upgrading from VMM 2008 RTM to VMM 2008 R2 RTM

This is an in-place upgrade, you don’t need any extra tools, it is build right in the product.

One caveat for this upgrade - You can’t restart any of the prior jobs after the upgrade, after upgrading all jobs that were run prior to the upgrade will appear in the job history; however, those jobs cannot be restarted. It is recommended that you allow all jobs to complete before upgrading the VMM server. Jobs that are canceled during the upgrade cannot be restarted after the upgrade is completed.

Pre-upgrade tasks;

1. Perform a full backup your VMM 2008 RTM database, this way in an unlikely case that something goes wrong you can always reinstall VMM 2008 RTM using this database.

Upgrade tasks;

1. Start the VMM 2008 R2 RTM setup (with elevated privileges) on a machine that contains a VMM 2008 RTM component and select any one of the components from the splash screen that comes up.

2. Setup will detect that you have a VMM 2008 RTM bits installed and will automatically start the “upgrade wizard”

3. In the wizard we will show you which components are installed on the box the setup is currently running and ask you to confirm that we will go ahead and upgrade all of these components. Note: You may ask what happens if I select a component from splash screen that is not installed on the box. Let’s say you have admin console and server installed on this box and you have selected Self-Service Portal. In this case the behavior is that we will first upgrade all the components (admin console and server for this example) and then start the installation of Self-Service portal.

Post upgrade tasks;

1. You will need to perform this procedure above on all computers that has a VMM 2008 RTM component installed (admin console or SSP)

2. Refresh all hosts and library servers from the admin console.

1. Go to hosts view (also Library view), select machines and select refresh from the actions pane. We are doing this manually so that we don’t have to wait for the host refresher to run. By doing this all the agents on these machines will find out that the db version has changes and they will go to “needs attention” state.

3. Now you will need to go to the “managed computers view” in admin console and right click all the agents (both on hosts and library servers) that are in “needs attention” state and select “update agent”. Note: You can multi select here but do these in batches of 10-25.

 

Upgrading from VMM 2008 R2 RC to VMM 2008 R2 RTM

This upgrade will require the “UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe” tool (this tool is available on the Microsoft Connect site under VMM 2008 R2 connection - https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/Downloads.aspx?SiteID=960 );

 

Pre-upgrade tasks;

1. Perform a full back up your VMM 2008 R2 RC database, this way in an unlikely case that something goes wrong you can always reinstall VMM 2008 R2 RC using this database.

Upgrade tasks;

1. Uninstall VMM 2008 R2 RC with “retain db” option

2. Open a command prompt with elevated privileges and run “UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe” tool against the “retained” db in the previous process.

a. Command usage: UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe –server <computername[\instancename]> -database <database>

                                                               i. E.g. UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe –server VMMDB01\MICROSOFT$VMM$ -database VirtualManagerDB

3. Install VMM 2008 R2 RTM using this upgraded db above.

 

Post upgrade tasks;

1. You will need to uninstall all components with RC code and install new components with RTM code (admin console, SSP)

2. Refresh all hosts and library servers from the admin console.

a. Go to hosts view (also Library view), select machines and select refresh from the actions pane. We are doing this manually so that we don’t have to wait for the host refresher to run. By doing this all the agents on these machines will find out that the db version has changes and they will go to “needs attention” state.

3. Now you will need to go to the “managed computers view” in admin console and right click all the agents (both on hosts and library servers) that are in “needs attention” state and select “update agent”. Note: You can multi select here but do these in batches of 10-25.

a. If you have machines that are in ‘access denied’ state, you will need to ‘reassociate’ these first before upgrading the agents; so right click those machines, select reaccociate then when it is complete right click again and select “update agent”

 

You may also have clustered hosts, you may still be on VMM 2007, created PRO configuration (OM integration) with VMM 2008 RTM and wondering how to migrate, for these topics please see VMM 2008 R2 Deployment Guide in VMM TechNet https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139191 there are great step-by-step guidance provided in that document.

 

Thank you and I hope this information helps you in your migration.

 

Kerim Hanif