For this post I will go through upgrading my Windows based vCenter from 5.5 to vCenter 6. VMware has really made the installer process lean. I would even go out on a limb and say “easy”! vCenter 6 introduces the Platform Services Controller which changes the architecture of vCenter down to two components. The graphic below shows my environment before the upgrade and after:
My setup is very simple as I have all vCenter 5.5 components on a single Server 2012 virtual machine. I have ran through the upgrade multiple times and have yet to run into anything major. To find what your environment will look like check out the VMware vCenter Server 6.0 Deployment Guide.