In this post, I will walk you through the process of upgrading and patching Aria Automation(vRA) using Aria Suite Lifecycle(vRLCM).
For the purposes of this blog, I will be upgrading an Aria Automation instance in my lab from version 8.11.2 to 8.16.2. Since I will be using Aria Suite Lifecycle to upgrade, it is essential to verify its interoperability with the target version of Aria Automation. In this case, I will need to upgrade vRLCM to version 8.16.0 before using it to upgrade vRA. Additionally, I will apply a PATCH following the upgrade to walk you through the patching procedure.
To check the interoperability you will need to rely on the Product Interoperability Matrix - https://interopmatrix.broadcom.com/Interoperability
For clarity and ease of reference, this blog post is divided into three parts:
Part 1 - Upgrading Aria Suite Lifecycle
To start with, verify whether the current version of vLCM (Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager) is compatible with the desired version of Aria Automation. Sometimes, you can resolve interoperabity issues by installing a product support pack, while other times, upgrading vLCM is necessary first. In this part of the blog, I will guide you through the process of upgrading Aria Suite Lifecycle and applying a product support pack to ensure interoperability with the target version of Aria Automation.
Prerequisite : Download both the product support pack and the Aria Suite Lifecycle update repository by logging into your Broadcom Support Portal - https://support.broadcom.com

Logon to vRLCM as admin@local and navigate to Lifecycle Operations | Settings | System Upgrade
Before you proceed further, it is recommended to take a snapshot. This can done from the same interface using the CREATE SNAPSHOTÂ option.
On the Create Snapshot window, supply the FQDN of the vCenter Server hosting the vRLCM appliance, select the credentials for the vCenter and click SUBMIT.
Navigate to Home | Requests to check the progress. Once complete, you should see a snapshot created on the appliance VM.
Screenshot-03 : Home | Requests showing Snapshot of vRSLCM VA complete successfully. Screenshot-04 : LCM created snapshot on the appliance VM. Now, logon to the vCenter managing the vRLCM appliance VM and attach the updaterepo ISO to it.
In this case, I have the ISO stored in a Content Library. The ISO can also be attached from your local machine(client device) or from a datastore.
Figure-01: Selecting the updaterepo ISO from a Content Library Figure-02: updaterepo attached from a content library Got back to Home | Settings | System Upgrade screen, set the repository type to CDROM and click CHECK FOR UPGRADE
Once it detects an available upgrade fron the ISO attached, click UPGRADE.
On the Sytem Upgrade | Prerequisites window, confirm that you have taken a snapshot and click NEXT.
On the Sytem Upgrade | PreCheck screen, click RUN PRECHECK and if it passes all validations, click UPGRADE to kick off the upgrade.
The progress of the upgrade can be tracked on the same screen.
At some point, you will lose access the UI and will be presented with a Waiting for services screen, as the appliance will be rebooted during the upgrade. From experience, this might take approximately 45 mins or more. Once the upgrade is compete, you will be presented with the login screen.
Logon as admin@local and navigate to Settings | System Details to confirm that it reflects the new version.
Installing Product Support Packs
Once vRLCM has been upgraded, navigate to Settings | Product Support Pack to check if the target Aria Automation version is listed. If it is not listed, you will need to install a product support pack.

From the above screenshot, you can tell that vRLCM 8.16.0 supports Aria Automation up to version 8.16.1. Since our target version is 8.16.2 we must install a product support pack. One way to confrm the Product Support Pack you need is to check the release notes of Aria Suite Lifecycle.
Let's take a look at the release note of version 8.16.x
From the release notes, although the most recent Product Support Pack is version 6, support for Aria Automation 8.16.2 was added with Product Support Pack version 1.

Now, since the product support packs are cumulative, you can always install the latest support pack. However, for the purposes of this blog, I have already download Product Support Pack 4, which we will install next.
To install Product Support Packs, navigate to  Lifeycle Operations | Settings | Product Support Pack and click UPLOAD. However, it is recommended that you take a snapshot before you do so.

Once you click UPLOAD, you will be presented with a Upload Support Pack File window, click SELECT FILE to browse and locate the file from your client machine. Click IMPORT to upload and map the product support pack.

Like every other task in vRLCM, you should be able to track the progress under Home | Requests.

Once done, you go back to Lifeycle Operations | Settings | Product Support Pack. If you are already at the Product Support Pack screen and don't see anything new, refresh the page for it to show the uploaded Product Support Pack. Click APPLY VERSION.

On the Apply Product Support Pack Confirmation window use the checkbox to confirm that you have taken a snapshot and click SUBMIT.

Much like with the upgrade, at some point, you will lose access to the UI and will be presented with a Waiting for services to start screen, as the appliance will be rebooted during the upgrade. You will be presented with the login screen when the appliance is ready.
Once the applince is ready, logon as admin@local and navigate to Lifeycle Operations | Settings | Product Support Pack to confrim whether the new product support pack is now available.

Aria Suite Lifecycle is now ready to support Aria Automation 8.16.2. In the next section, we will take a look at the procedure to upgrade Aria Automation.
Part 2 - Upgrading Aria Automation
In Part-1 of this blog post, we upgraded Aria Suite LifeCycle (vRLCM), and applied a product support pack to ensure compatibility with the target version of Aria Automation. In Part-2, I will walk you through with the process of upgrading Aria Automation using Aria Suite Lifecycle.
There are three Steps:
Step 1 : Staging the Update Repository
Prerequisite : Download the target version's Aria Automation update repository ISO by logging into your Broadcom Support Portal - https://support.broadcom.com

Once you have the update repositiry downloaded, it needs to be uploaded to vRLCM appliance. You can upload it to the /data/temp folder on the appliance. To transfer the file using tools such as WinSCP.
Once the repository ISO has been copied to the /data/temp folder on vRLCM, it needs to be mapped.
Go to Lifecycle Operations | Settings | Binary Mapping
On the Binary Mappings screen, go to the Product Binaries tab and click ADD BINARIES.
On the Add Product Binary page, set the location type to Local, and specify the directory to the repo location as the Base Location (in this case it is /data/temp) and click DISCOVER. It should instanty disovery the uploaded repository. Select the correct update repository (if it discovers more than one from the same path) and click ADD.
The progress of the mapping request can be tracked by navigating to Lifecycle Operations | Requests. You should see a Product Source Mapping Request complete sucessfully.
Step 2 - Resizing vRA Node
Resizing the vRA is not always requried, unless the hardware requirements of the target version has changed. In this case, starting with 8.16.2, medium sized vRA nodes needs to have 54 GB of memory configured which is 12 GB more that the previous requirement of 42 GB. The process, however, is straightforward.
Power-off the vRA Node (all the nodes if it is a cluster) using vRLCM
Delete All the existing snapshots on all of the nodes, this can be done using vRLCM (for snapshots created using vRLCM) or vCenter.
Using vCenter, edit the settings of the VM and increase the memory to 54 GB.
Power-on vRA node/s using vRLCM.
Step 3 - Perfroming the Upgrade
Now that we have increased the memory on the vRA node to 54GB, we are ready to proceed with the upgrade.
Go back to Lifecycle Operations | Environments and click VIEW DETAILS on the environment corresponding to the vRA node and click UPGRADE.
On the Proceed to Upgrade screen, you can trigger an inventory sync, if it wasn't recently done. Then select the checkbox acknowledging the FIPS will be temporarily deactivated during the upgrade and click PROCEED.
On the Upgrade VMware Aria Automation screen, set the Repository Type to VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle Repository, select the correct Product Version (in this case it is 8.16.2) and click NEXT.
On the Snapshot screen, the option to take a snapshot is pre-selected and greyed-out because a mandatory snapshot will be created during the upgrade.
(This step is version specific) On the validation screen confirm that you have resized the vRA node. Refer Step 2 - Resizing vRA Node
Once all validations have passed, click NEXT to continue.
Review the Upgrade Summary and click SUBMIT to kick off the Upgrade.
Tip : As with other stages of the upgrade wizard, you can choose to SAVE & EXIT if you plan to perform the actual upgrade at a later time. This is especially useful when you want to complete all necessary prechecks in advance.

The progress of the upgrade can be tracked under Requests, like all other LCM tasks.

You can also keep track of the upgrade using the CLI. To do so, SSH into the vRA node and run the following commands to check the progress:
# vracli upgrade status --follow.
//to follow along with all upgrade sub-tasks and its status
or
# vracli upgrade status
//to check the current task

In some cases, vRLCM might timeout and lose track of the progress of the upgrade while waiting on the services to come back up after the upgrade. If such a thing happens use the commands mentioned above to keep track of the upgrade.

If the upgrade status is at "deploying services", then it simply means that it is wating on all the k8s pods to initialize. If you wish to check of the status of the k8s pods, run the following command:
# kubectl get pods -n prelude

Once you see all the pods Running, do a vracli upgrade status to confirm that the upgrade is complete.

Once vracli indicates that the upgrade is complete, initiate a RETRY from the vRLCM UI for it to fetch the current status and continue.

It will proceed with validating the upgrade status and delete the snapshot(the default setting is not to retain snapshot after a sucessful upgrade) . You should eventually see the Upgrade Product request complete sucessfully.

Part 3 - Patching Aria Automation
In this part of the post, I will walk you through the steps to apply a patch to Aria Automation. Broadcom patches are ad-hoc releases and typically address security or bug issues. For example, most security advisories will include a patch to implement.
Note: Unlike with the upgrade, the patch installation process does not automatically create a snaphot. Hence it is recommended to create a snapshot prior to applying a patch. Read the post - "Creating Offline Snapshots of vRA Nodes" if you are unfamilair with the process of creating offline snapshots.
Once you have the patch file downloaded, it needs to be uploaded to vRLCM appliance. You can upload it to the /data/temp folder on the appliance. To transfer the file using tools such as WinSCP.
Once the patch file is uploaded to /data/temp folder on vRLCM, it needs to be mapped.
Go to Lifecycle Operations | Settings | Binary Mapping
On the Binary Mappings screen, go to the Patch Binaries tab and click ADD PATCH BINARY.
On the Add Patch Product Binary page, enter the source location (/data/temp in this case) and click DISCOVER. Once the patch has been successfully discovered, click ADD.
You should see an Offline Patch Mapping request complete sucessfully.
Navigate to Lifecycle Operations | Environments and click VIEW DETAILS on the environment corresponding to the vRA node.
On the environment's page, click the three elipses to drop-down the menu and go to Patches | Install Patch
On the Install Patch screen, select the patch to install and click NEXT.
On the Precheck screen, run the precheck and if all the validations are successful, click NEXT to continue.
On the Review and Install page, tick the checkbox to acknowleged that FIPS will temporarily deactivated during the upgrade and click INSTALL to kick of the patch installation.
You should see a Product Patch Install request in progress and complete successfully, under Home | Requests
Much like with the upgrade, you could SSH into the vRA node and run the "vracli upgrade status --follow" command to track the progress.
Once the patching is complete, go back to the vRA environment's details page, click the horizontal elipses to drop-down the menu and go to Patches | History to confirm that the patch has been applied.

Another method to confirm this is from the CLI. SSH into the vRA node as root and run the following commands:
# vracli version
// to check the vRA version and build
# vracli version patch
// to reveal the build number of the patch installed

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