Patch VCF Automation before the Migration Service Engine

Here is a very important note to keep in mind before patching VCF Automation and the Migration Service Engine from 9.1.0.0 to the new maintenance release 9.1.1.0.

VCF Automation must be patched before you attempt to patch the Migration Service Engine.

This is called out clearly in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.1.0 Release Notes:

Before you patch the migration service engine component from 9.1.0.0 to 9.1.1.0, you must first patch VCF Automation.

What happens if you get the order wrong

If you go ahead and patch the Migration Service Engine while VCF Automation is still on 9.1.0.0, the task does not fail fast. It sits there and burns through the full task timeout before giving up.

The subtask Perform VCD_MIGRATOR upgrade progresses through its earlier steps normally, the backup completes, and then it stalls:

Severity	Message
Info	Backup has been completed successfully for component vcd-migrator.
Info	SFTP is configured, backup encryption enabled=false.
Error	Task timed out after 6h0m31s.
Info	Deploying VCF Component. Status: Failed
Error	Step vmsp_upgrade failed. Reference Code: 85616483. Check logs for details.

Six hours, and the only real clue is Step vmsp_upgrade failed. Note that the component appears in the task list under its internal name, VCD_MIGRATOR, rather than as Migration Service Engine, which is worth knowing if you are searching task history or logs.

Why the order matters

This happens due to the Postgres dependencies. The Migration Service Engine patch expects the database changes that come with the VCF Automation 9.1.1.0 patch to already be in place. Run it first and those dependencies are simply not there yet, so vmsp_upgrade has nothing to work against and the step never completes.

The order to follow

1. Patch the Fleet Lifecycle component first, before any other VCF component
2. Work through the rest of the components, including SDDC Lifecycle and VCF Operations
3. Patch VCF Automation to 9.1.1.0
4. Only then patch the Migration Service Engine

If you have already hit this, reach out to Broadcom Technical Support.

Worth checking the other dependencies too

The migration service engine is not the only ordering constraint in this release. The same section of the release notes also calls out:

• Patching a software depot instance blocks patching of other components, because the patch binaries are unavailable until the software depot patch completes.
• Before you patch an identity broker instance from 9.1.0.0 to 9.1.1.0, you must first patch the respective VCF management services runtime that hosts it.
• Before you patch Salt RaaS from 9.1.0.0 to 9.1.1.0, you must first patch the respective VCF management services runtime that hosts the Salt RaaS instance.

For the wider picture on this release, see VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.1 is now available.