In case you didn’t notice, vRealize Log Insight 4.0.0 has been released earlier this week and is available for download. This article focusses on the required upgrade steps.

Keep it simple, stupid

Because the upgrade was so simple and straight forward, I thought it’d be a good idea to share this with you and take away any concerns you might have before upgrading.

While reading the release notes, upgrading is only possible from version 3.6. If you are currently on version 3.0,  you should upgrade to 3.3 first before upgrading to 3.6.

If you have more than one node in your cluster, the master node gets updated first. If you run vRealize Log Insight behind a load balancer, you should upgrade it using the master FQDN, not the FQDN used for your load balancer IP or VIP.

After the master node has been upgraded, you can see the progress of the other nodes in the cluster menu of vRealize Log Insight. When all nodes have been upgraded, a system notification is sent.

So what’s new?

General improvements

• vSphere 6.5 compatibility.
• System notification enhancements.
• Support for custom SSL certificates in the vCenter Server edition.
• Support for Spanish locale(ES).

UI Features

• New overall User Interface based on the VMware Clarity standard.
• New speedometer-like Gauge Chart type for event count visualizations.
• New Admin Alert Management tool and UI to view and manage all user alerts.
• New filter called Does Not Exist to find events that do not contain some specified field.
• Support for Datastore Device ID-to-name aliasing in event queries and results.
• New “blur” on session timeout.

Server Features

• Support for Syslog octet-framing over TCP.
• Defined REST APIs for installing Log Insight servers and clusters.
• Support for time ranges with Event Type alert queries.

Agent and Importer Features

• SLES 11 SP3 and SLES 12 SP1 are supported for Linux agents.
• The dateext (daily extension) option of logrotate is now supported.
• SSL for the vRealize Log Insight agent is now enabled by default.

Content Pack Features

• Users can now subscribe to content pack alerts that allow automated updates inline with the associated content pack.

Changed Behavior

• New Agent installations have SSL enabled by default. Previously, Agent installs defaulted to SSL off. Upgrading does not affect current SSL settings.
• New event forwarder destinations now default to verifying SSL certificates. Previously, SSL certificates were not verified by default. Upgrading does not affect current settings.
• vRealize Log Insight for vCenter now allows you to change SSL settings.
• For content pack alerts instantiated in 4.0, content pack updates now automatically update alert definitions. If needed, you can preserve customizations by exporting them and then importing them back into the user profile after the update is applied.

Upgrade steps

First, download the upgrade package from VMware.com as shown below. Make sure you get the .pak file.

Next, log into vRealize Log Insight and navigate to the Cluster item in the menu on the left.

Click upgrade cluster and select the .pak file you just downloaded.

Depending on the bandwidth between the machine you’re logged on to and vRealize Log Insight, this could take a short while.

After uploading, accept (and of course read!) the license agreement.

The upgrade should now proceed.

And after some minutes, upgrade complete!

Wasn’t hard at all, was it? =)

After you relaunch your web browser session to vRealize Log Insight, you should be presented with the new login screen.