Planning and Performing RP4VM Upgrade

To perform a successful RP4VM upgrade, first get the current versions of your ESXi (can be VxRail) and RP4VM versions and decide what versions you can upgrade to.

The rule of thumb is here to upgrade the RP4VM first and upgrade ESXi (VxRail) afterwards if needed. Always consult, Dell Technologies Support or access to Solve Online to get the relevant procedures for the upgrade. Moreover, always start with the replication target cluster and then upgrade production cluster. Do not perform RP4VM upgrade simulataneously on connected clusters.

As a preperation, I usually download the Upgrade and Maintenance Kit from support website, and extract the file to a location which is capable to upload files to Recoverpoint for VMs Deployer and SSH/SFTP to the ESXi hosts. Uploading the vibs to /scratch directory to each ESXi host can be time saving before starting the vib upgrades.

In general, the upgrade has 3 phases.

1. Upgrading vRPAs
2. Upgrading vibs
3. Upgrading Plugin

Upgrading vRPAs

After making sure that all prerequisites are applied, we can start the upgrades connecting to RP4VM cluster IP Address to open Recoverpoint for VMs Deployer and click Upgrade a vRPA Cluster. If you encounter any warning or errors, try fixing them or open a Service Request to resolve the issue.

Upgrading vibs

The important thing to notice when upgrading the vibs are that we need to enter the hosts to maintenance mode one by one. If you are upgrading to RP4VM 5.3.2 and later, make sure you will install the correct emcjiraf vib file since it is 2 different files for ESXi 6.5/6.7 and ESXi 7

Some simple steps are as follows;

1. Note the VM Policy details for each vRPA
2. Change the Recoverpoint VM Policy to Datastore Default and Apply
3. Pick one of the hosts
4. Enter Maintenance mode
5. Check any of the vibs needs to be upgraded
6. Remove the vib(s)
7. Check whether vib requires reboot of ESXi host. (Currently it does not require reboot, but may require in the future)
8. Install the new version of the vib
9. Check the vib versions that are installed and you are at the correct versions
10. Exit maintenance mode
11. Check ESXi cluster state (resyncing objects in vSAN)
12. Revert back the VM Policy of the vRPAs to their original state

Upgrading Plugin

Important : If there are more than 1 vRPA clusters under the same vcenter, make sure that your RP4VM Plugin is compatible with the oldest RP4VM cluster. 

Follow the steps for relevant plugin upgrade.

Hope this will help. Thanks!