vRealize Network Insight 6.3 Upgrade

vRealize Network Insight 6.3 general availability was announced on July 13th 2021. Key highlights of the release are as following –

VMware Cloud :

Introducing Support for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.
VMware Cloud on AWS – Configuration max alerts and trends related to networking and security. Ex. Firewall rules.

2. Platform Enhancements :

Scale – Support for up to 15 node XL Platform cluster – larger environments / datacenters with more number of datasources, VMs and supporting network assurance and flow based application discovery.
Enhanced Security – Communication between the platform nodes within a cluster can now be configured to happen over a secure IPSEC Tunnel (CLI based configuration).

3. VMware SD-WAN :

Detailed dashboard for SD-WAN gateways with tunnel topologies, with an ability to filter between healthy, unhealthy and all tunnels.
Sankey chart with flow insights from source to destination edge traffic.

4. Network Assurance and Verification :

New Intent to check for HSRP (Hot Standby Routing Protocol) and VRRP (Virtual Route Redundancy Protocol) configuration mismatch between Router peers.
Network map view in full screen giving better user experience by being able to make best use of the screen space.

5. NSX T :

Near real time alerts (less than 5 mins) as compared to 10 – 15 mins in the past, which has been a big ask from a troubleshooting perspective. Refer https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight/6.3/com.vmware.vrni.using.doc/GUID-75C04947-0E5B-46CB-892B-DE106A3E1B0C.html
Packets per second (PPS) metrics available on NSX-T manager dashboard enabling easier interpretation.
Support for OpenShift 4.x with NSX-T container plug-in when added as an individual OpenShift 4.x cluster using Kubeconfig.

6. Datasource configuration and metrics :

Custom polling interval for physical data sources can be now set as a value anywhere between 10 minutes up to 7 days. This also gives an additional option to initiate an on-demand polling on these data sources.
Packets Per Seconds (PPS) metrics for the routers and switches and can also use search queries for PPS.

Upgrade Steps

vRealize Network Insight 6.3 supports direct upgrade from versions 6.1 and 6.2 only. Refer to https://interopmatrix.vmware.com/#/Upgrade?productId=285 for the upgrade paths.

Prechecks before upgrade –

As seen with the upgrade steps on previous versions of vRNI, please follow the best practices of snapshotting the platform nodes (order of guest OS shutdown, snapshot and order of power on) or other recommended backup techniques before initiating the upgrade – https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/55829

Ensuring disk space on the platform and collector nodes – Platform and Collector instances to have the following free space on the partitions /tmp = 6 GB and /home= 2 GB. Also on Platform Node 1, it’s recommended to have / = 12GB and /var = 40 GB space. In order to login to the platform to check the free space using df-dh command, use SSH login (username : support). Refer to :

To avoid UI session time out during the upgrade (especially if it takes more time), its recommended to increase the User Session Timeout (Settings -> System Configuration -> User Session Timeout) value to at least 2 hours.

Ensure that all vRNI nodes are online. If any node is inactive, we wont be able to initiate the upgrade.

Upgrade Steps –

Here we will follow the offline upgrade method. So will start by downloading the offline upgrade bundle file for vRNI 6.3 from : https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=VRNI-630&productId=1070&rPId=68697

Download the file vRealize Network Insight 6.3.0 Offline Upgrade Bundle

The upgrade steps will be performed only on Platform Node 1.
Login to the vRNI UI using IP / FQDN and navigate to -> Settings (click on the wheel icon on top right corner of the UI page) -> Infrastructure and Support -> Overview and Updates :

The above screenshot shows ‘a new version 6.3.0xxxx is available’ in green under online update, because this vRNI lab instance has external connectivity. We chose to do offline upgrade, since lot of environments may not have external access into internet. Hence we will click on the ‘Click Here’ link in blue next to Offline Update want to update using an update package?
This will now give us an option to browse to the downloaded upgrade bundle –

After the file is selected, click upload

The upload process may take a few minutes:

And once the file upload is complete and available for the upgrade:

Click on View details (next to Uploaded Bundle 6.3.0xxx in the Offline Update section)

Check the box that says ‘I have read the above options’ and click on Confirm

The next step will verify the build –

Once the verification is success for all the points, click Install Now.

This will now start the actual upgrade process –

we can scroll down and see the process starting on Collector instances –

Keep a watch to ensure all steps are completing successfully –

A successful completion of all steps will indicate a successful upgrade –

After we click on Done, the page will re-direct to the vRNI login again. Login to the UI and verify the version (6.3.0) and System health under – Settings -> Overview and Updates –