VMware released vRealize Network Insight 3.2 in short succession of 3.1 and provided a lot of new features and general fixes which includes the following:

• Application Centric Micro-segmentation
  This feature supports the following:
  • Users can define the grouping filters. They can define the custom application tiers for determining micro-segmentation firewall rules.
  • The visualization of traffic/flows between tiers is available.
  • The security group recommendations are based upon groupings.
• XML Export of Firewall Rules
  The user can perform the export of recommended firewall rules and services configuration. This is imported into NSX Manager
• Visualization of NSX Edge NAT North/South Gateways
  This feature supports the following:
  • Configuring the View All mode for seeing the NSX NAT instances.
  • Including the Edge NAT gateway when visualizing VM to VM communication paths.
  • Listing of NSX Edge NAT rules by clicking the NAT services icons.
  • Supporting SNAT, DNAT and nested NAT

  
  

• SNMP Traps for outbound alerting to 3rd party SNMP platforms
  This feature supports the following:
  • MIBs published on VMware MIB repository
  • Compatibility of SNMP v2c and v3
  • Administrator selects problem alerts within Network Insight in which to forward as traps
  • Forwarding of GUI representation of alerts
  • SNMP outbound test function
• NSX Distributed Firewall Rules Analytics and Visualization Enhancements
  This feature supports path visualization that include only rules that are enabled (active).
  
  
• NSX configuration assurance, health and capacity checks
  This feature includes 31 additional checks with coverage for controllers, edge services, Virtual Tunnel endpoints (VTEPS) and NSX Manager
• Platform security enhancements
  The platform security enhancements are:
  • Icon within the system admin console for seeing storage capacity/utilization
  • Ability to add additional capacity within vCenter
  • Post addition, recalculation of storage capacity

• On-Line Upgrading
  This feature allows customers to upgrade Network Insight that are connected to internet. It supports the following:
  • Version checking and upgrade recommendations
  • GUI based upgrading with status indicators

This blog is primarily about the upgrade process and as mentioned in the what’s new section VMware made on-line upgrade available in 3.2, which in my opinion currently does not simplify this process and requires a support ticket to be opened with VMware GSS.

I will be using the offline upgrade (made available in 3.1) which consists of downloading the upgrade bundle file from my.vmware.com and manually running the commands to complete the task.

Here are steps for the offline upgrade from 3.1 to 3.2:

1. Take Snapshot of the vRNI Platform and Proxy VM!
2. Download upgrade bundle from My VMware.
3. Make sure to copy the upgrade.bundle file to a linux VM since the package-installer command only supports pulling the file from such a host.
4. Copy the downloaded upgrade bundle to vRealize Network Insight Platform and Proxy VMs by running the following package-installer copy command:
   1. (cli) package-installer copy –host 10.10.40.155 –user root–path /tmp/VMWare-vRNI.3.2.0.1480511973.upgrade.bundle
   2. Specify the password
   3. Wait for the copy to complete.
5. Upgrade the virtual machines using package-installer upgrade command. Generally, upgrade would complete within 30 minutes after this step. Depending on the download speed, it may take up to few hours.Run the command:
   1. (cli) package-installer upgrade
6. Verify the upgraded version using the show-version command:
   1. (cli) show-version
   2. You should see: 3.2.0.1480511973
7. It is not mentioned anywhere but I found that you have to reboot the appliances after the upgrade for the new commands to be available in the CLI.  This is easily done through vCenter server, however in 3.2 you will have the command “appliance-reboot” available.
8. From the vRNI 3.2 CLI Guide a new command is available which provides the ability to change the “consoleuser” SSH account password, which I highly recommend to run.
   1. (cli) modify-password consoleuser

Links:

https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2148271

https://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vrni/32/vrealize-network-insight-32-release-notes.html

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vrni/vrealize-network-insight-32-cli-guide.pdf

http://blogs.vmware.com/management/2016/12/whats-new-vrealize-network-3-2.html