Last week VMware released NSX-v 6.3.3 (Build 6276725) and with it comes a new operating system for the NSX Controllers. Once upgraded the new controllers will be powered by Photon OS which is more and more making it’s way into VMware’s appliances. There are a few other new bits in this release but more importantly a number of Resolved Issues. For those running homelabs with one NSX Controller there are some important upgrade notes to be made aware of before kicking off…i’ll go into those below.

Compatibility:

Before moving to the upgrade there are some important notes around interoperability and supported ESXi versions as is explained in this VMwareKB. The minimum supported version of ESXi running with NSX-v 6.3.3 is as shown below:

  • NSX-v 6.3.3 installed in a vSphere 5.5 environment requires a minimum version of ESXi 5.5 GA
  • NSX-v 6.3.3 installed in a vSphere 6.0 environment requires a minimum version of ESXi 6.0 Update 2
  • NSX-v 6.3.3 installed in a vSphere 6.5 environment requires a minimum version of ESXi 6.5a
If NSX 6.3.3 is installed on an earlier version of 5.5/6.0 ESXi, the netcpa service will fail to start preventing communication between ESXi hosts and the NSX Controllers.
In terms of upgrading from previous versions of NSX-v you can see that the upgrade path does have some stoppers.Below is the interoperability matrix that included vCloud Director 8.20 which, at the moment is not supported with NSX-v 6.3.3…I expect that to change over the next couple of weeks.
Upgrading to NSX-v 6.3.3:

 

As mentioned there are things to look out for during and after the upgrade from previous builds of NSX-v. There are detailed upgrade notes in the release notes so as always, make sure to read those as well, but below is a brief walk through of the upgrade process I conducted in one of my NestedESXi labs.
Once the NSX Manager has been upgraded you should have the following in your Summary tab:
Once the NSX Manager has been upgraded you should restart the vCenter Web Client to ensure any lingering parts of the previous version are removed. Login to the Web Client and click through to Networking & Security -> Installation and then the Management Tab where you will see Upgrade Available.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The upgrade notes state that you need to have a minimum of three NSX Controllers which I’d say is linked to the fact that the underlying OS of the Controllers has been shifted to Photon OS. This is likely to impact anyone running NSX in a NestedESXi or homelab as generally, only one was deployed to preserve resources. Once you click on upgrade you will get a special upgrade warning before committing to the upgrade as shown below:
  • The NSX Controller cluster must contain three controller nodes to upgrade to NSX 6.3.3. If it has fewer than three controllers, you must add controllers before starting the upgrade
  • When you upgrade to NSX-v 6.3.3, instead of an in-place software upgrade, the existing controllers are deleted one at a time, and new Photon OS based controllers are deployed using the same IP addresses

There is also a slight increase to the size of the storage for the controllers from 20GB to 28GB. Once upgraded the NSX Controllers will be at version 6.3.6235594.

The last major step is to upgrade the Host components from the Host Preparation tab. On vSphere 6.0 and above once you have upgraded to NSX 6.3.x, all future NSX VIB changes do not trigger a reboot…only maintenance mode is required to complete the VIB change. In NSX 6.3.3 there is a change to the NSX VIB names on ESXi 6.0 and later where the esx-vxlan and esx-vsip VIBs have been merged and replaced with esx-nsxv as shown below.

VIB names on ESXi 5.5 remain the same.

References:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX-for-vSphere/6.3/rn/releasenotes_nsx_vsphere_633.html

https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2151267