Can I rollback to ESXi 5.0 from 5.1? (re: PCI issues)

[sofakng]

Because of the broken PCI pass-through issues I need to rollback to ESXi 5.0 from my current ESXi 5.1 installation.

What is the easiest way to do this?

Unfortunately I've "Upgraded Virtual Hardware" in several virtual machines so is it even possible for me to rollback to 5.0?

[microkid]

Yes. When you start the ESXi server, at the boot screen, press shift-r. This starts the rollback procedure. It will show you the two available hypervisors: 5.1 and 5.0. When you select 5.0 the system will do a rollback to 5.0. I had to do the same because I suffered from slow NFS problems with my Synology nas. The rollback took a few minutes and I'm back at 5.0 now.

[sparrowangelste]

do what microkid said

hold shift+r when booting up and that shoud work.

as far as the virutal machine hardware, if its already 9 then you have a problem.

you would have to roll abck to a restore or use vmware converter

if you have a snapshot that would work too.

[microkid]

If you dare, you can also edit the vmx file and change the vm version level from 9 back to 8 or 7

[sparrowangelste]

i read about it but havent tried it.

is that reliable for production?

Looks like it has worked in the past

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2046391

[DubaiBoy]

Am facing issue and need sollution ASAP !!!

I done upgrade from esxi 5.0 to 5.1 then faced issue while reconnecting host to vCenter 5.0 (cant upgrade vCenter as upgrade not supported in View 5 environment).

So i rollback from 5.1 to 5.0 , but after success rollback alert restarted server and once come up still using esxi 5.1 !

i even checked rollback option and default esxi set to 5.0 but host using 5.1 when its up ??

please i need urgent sollution for this, i need to do this ASAP

[sanderdaems1987]

You tried to rollback like this? http://blog.vmpros.nl/2012/10/03/vmware-how-to-rollback-esxi-5-1-to-5-0/