With the release of VMware vCenter Server Appliance 8.0 (vCSA), I wanted to upgrade my lab setup to the latest release to check out some of the new features.

In this post we will go through the process, this is be the same process as previous version of vCSA just some of the wizard screen have changed slightly.

Before starting the upgrade process make sure you have a valid backup and I also take a snapshot of the existing vCSA just incase there are any issues.

First, we need to download the vCSA ISO,

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/info/slug/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere/8_0

Next, I usually rename the existing VCSA to _old as I want to deploy to the vCenter with the same name.

Next, we can mount the vCenter ISO to launch the installer.exe.

Next on the install select upgrade.

The introduction will warn that if using an external PSC it will be converged as external PSC are being deprecated.

Next accept the end user agreement.

Put in the details for the existing Appliance.

We will have to put in the details of the existing vCenter or ESXi host. My vCSA is installed on a standalone ESXi host, so I used those details.

If there is a cert warning accept to continue.

Enter the details for the target server where the new vCSA is going to be deployed to.

Enter the existing vCenter server name (as long as you renamed the VM name first)

Select the VM size.

Select the datastore to use.

Next, we need to select the network and give the vCSA a temporary IP, this is to allow it to be contactable so that the data migration can happen. After the data migration the original IP will be moved to the new vCSA.

Now review the deployment details.

Click finish to start the deployment.

Once the deployment is completed, we can start stage 2.

Click continue

Next we will go through stage two of the upgrade.

First part will verify the connection and run pre-checks for any issues.

Review these result to confirm there will be no issues. .

Select what data to move.

Tick to join customer experience or not and continue.

Review the settings and confirm everything is correct.

Click finish to start the data transfer.

The data migration can take a while depending on the amount of data to be moved.

Once completed we can now logon to the vCSA and confirm that we are running vCenter 8.0.