Time Between Upgrading Pods

[VMHVVDI]

Hello Omnissa Community,

We are about to do a Horizon Upgrade from 2111.1 to 2406. Our environment consists of two identical pods (active-active). The plan was to upgrade on the same weekend; “Pod1” on Saturday, and “Pod2” on Sunday. However, my coworker and I were talking today and we pondered doing the upgrades on consecutive Saturdays instead of over the same weekend. However, long ago, I believe I was cautioned about having two pods on different versions for too long. Am I correct about that? What would be considered the best practice regarding the timing between pod upgrades?

As a side question, after this upgrade is complete, we will be upgrading to vSphere to 8.x. For my parent images, when I upgrade VMware Tools, will I also need to reinstall the Horizon Agent and DEM agent as well? Or is that process a thing of the past.

Thanks.

[robryan]

you'll be fine staggering it, most people do it exactly that way "just in case" - as long as you don't immediately start trying to take advantage of anything "new" between the patch versions, but even then there shouldn't really be anything that affects cross-pod communication (unless you've locked yourself back to some sort of old TLS versions, 2406 is 1.3 for everything) -- if anything your biggest risk might be if you haven't already implemented newer versions of Windows Server underneath all that (like if you're running on 2012 still)

.. and if you go updating the tools later on your images, technically it's supposed to work, but if the Horizon svga driver gets overwritten you could find yourself with weirdness - it's usually better to start fresh when you're redoing that level from an entire version perspective (7 to 8 in your case, or older)

[Sean Massey-1]

I agree with @robryan.  A week between pod upgrades should be fine.

So here is the thing on VMware Tools and the Horizon Agent.  The Horizon Agent used to have it's own customized version of the SVGA driver, and if you installed or upgraded VMware Tools and the Agent in the wrong order, the customized driver would be overwritten.  That stopped being an issue by Horizon 8 2111 when the SVGA driver was removed from the Horizon Agent, and now you no longer need to install or upgrade Tools before the Agent.

This is documented in KB2118048, which states the following:

Quote

The installation order for Omnissa Tools and the Horizon agent can be ignored from Horizon version 2111. This is due to the svga driver no longer being supplied with the Horizon Agent an uses the Omnissa Tools svga driver. The install order for DEM and App Volumes agents still apply for all Horizon versions.

You can find the KB here: https://kb.omnissa.com/s/article/2118048

 

[Sean Massey-1]

I forgot to add one thing.  I always recommend opening a support ticket proactively when planning for multi-pod Horizon upgrades.  This way the ticket is open in case you need it, and you're not wasting time trying to get a ticket opened if you run into issues during the upgrade.

[VMHVVDI]

@robryan and @Sean Massey-1, thank you very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it.  Your comments make me feel more comfortable trying to complete this over a wider span of time.  Assuming this goes well, we will do the VxRail upgrades to 8.x sometime in December. We are 2111.1 right now so it seems like, as you pointed out Sean, it seems I should be able to upgrade the tools without revisiting the agents. But I think I will leave the 2406 Horizon and DEM agents on my images just in case. You never know.

Thanks again to you both. I'll try to mark both of your comments as the solution.

[VMHVVDI]

Sorry @robryan, it seemed to only to mark one comment as the solution.