vCSA upgrade tips & recommendations

Upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance looks simple enough. If you run into problems, maybe these tips can help:

• Create the 20G (yes 20G) disk in the kb article. 
• Take a snapshot first (shut down services)
• Really. TAKE A SNAPSHOT FIRST
• If the upgrade does not go smoothly the first time, do not try again with a half-broken install. Revert to snap.
• If your upgrade breaks during the export, check your free inodes (df -i)
• Increase the number of inodes on the /storage/db/export partition (mkfs -t ext2 -i 8192 /dev/sdc1 )
• Problems mounting /dev/sdc1 (doesn't like ext2)? tune2fs -O has_journal /dev/sdc1
• tail -f /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log during the upgrade. This file is created a minute or two after you kick off the upgrade. 
• There will be a long (potentially hours long) pause in the log while the database export is happening. Top will show db2bp kjourneld and db2sync in use. Do not kill any of these processes. 
• You didn't take my advice and create a snapshot? You needed to use a restored backup? You might need to remove the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules mac addresses if the appliance says it can't bring up eth0.