VCH Upgrade Options
The command line utility for vSphere Integrated Containers Engine, vic-machine, provides an upgrade command that allows you to upgrade virtual container hosts (VCHs) to a newer version.
The vic-machine upgrade command includes the following options in addition to the common options described in Common vic-machine Options.
NOTE: Wrap any option arguments that include spaces or special characters in quotes. Use single quotes if you are using vic-machine on a Linux or Mac OS system and double quotes on a Windows system.
--appliance-iso
Short name: --ai
The path to the new version of the ISO image from which to upgrade the VCH appliance. Set this option if you have moved the appliance.iso file to a folder that is not the folder that contains the vic-machine binary or is not the folder from which you are running vic-machine. Include the name of the ISO file in the path.
NOTE: Do not use the --appliance-iso option to point vic-machine to an --appliance-iso file that is of a different version to the version of vic-machine that you are running.
--appliance-iso path_to_ISO_file/ISO_file_name.iso
--bootstrap-iso
Short name: --bi
The path to the new version of the ISO image from which to upgrade the container VMs that the VCH manages. Set this option if you have moved the bootstrap.iso file to a folder that is not the folder that contains the vic-machine binary or is not the folder from which you are running vic-machine. Include the name of the ISO file in the path.
NOTE: Do not use the --bootstrap-iso option to point vic-machine to a --bootstrap-iso file that is of a different version to the version of vic-machine that you are running.
--bootstrap-iso path_to_ISO_file/bootstrap.iso
--force
Short name: -f
Forces vic-machine upgrade to ignore warnings and continue with the upgrade of a VCH. Errors such as an incorrect compute resource still cause the upgrade to fail.
CAUTION: Specifying the --force option bypasses safety checks, including certificate thumbprint verification. Using --force in this way can expose VCHs to the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, in which attackers can learn vSphere credentials. Using --force can result in unexpected deployment topologies that would otherwise fail with an error. Do not use --force in production environments.
--force
--rollback
Short name: None
Rolls a VCH back to its previous version, for example if upgrade failed. Before starting the upgrade process, vic-machine upgrade takes a snapshot of the existing VCH. The upgrade process deletes older snapshots from any previous upgrades. The --rollback option reverts an upgraded VCH to the snapshot of the previous deployment. Because vic-machine upgrade only retains one snapshot, you can only use --rollback to revert the VCH to the version that immediately precedes the most recent upgrade.
IMPORTANT: Since vic-machine configure also takes a snapshot of the VCH, when you attempt to rollback a VCH that has been upgraded with vic-machine upgrade and has undergone a configuration change with vic-machine configure, you must run vic-machine configure --rollback to roll back the configuration to the previous settings before running vic-machine upgrade --rollback to roll the VCH back to its previous version.
--rollback
--reset-progress
If an attempt to upgrade a VCH was interrupted before it could complete successfully, any further attempts to run vic-machine upgrade fail with the error another upgrade/configure operation is in progress. This happens because vic-machine upgrade sets an UpdateInProgress flag on the VCH endpoint VM that prevents other operations on that VCH while the upgrade operation is ongoing. If an upgrade operation is interrupted before it completes, this flag persists on the VCH indefinitely.
To clear the flag so that you can attempt further vic-machine upgrade operations, run vic-machine upgrade with the --reset-progress option.
--reset-progress
IMPORTANT: Before you run vic-machine upgrade --reset-progress, check in Recent Tasks in the vSphere Client that there are indeed no update or configuration operations in progress on the VCH endoint VM.
--debug
Short name: -v
Upgrade the VCH with more verbose levels of logging. For example, by setting a higher debug level, you increase the verbosity of the logging for VCH upgrade, initialization of VCH services, container VM initialization, and so on.
NOTE: Do not confuse the vic-machine upgrade --debug option with the vic-machine debug command, that enables access to the VCH endpoint VM. For information about vic-machine debug, see Debug Running Virtual Container Hosts.
You can set a debugging level of 1, 2, or 3. Setting level 2 or 3 changes the behavior of vic-machine upgrade as well as increasing the level of verbosity of the logs.
--debug 1