upgrade to esxi 5 on very busy production server

[markmyers]

I have a essentail plus licience for esxi 4 that can be upgraded to 5 and still have full production support from vmware. I do not have sva upgrade. sure wish i did. I want to upgrade to 5 but simply cannot bring the servers down. Is there a way that is supported to upgrade to 5 with the system live and no down time.  

Thank you fpr reading and helping in advance...

Mark

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Is there a way that is supported to upgrade to 5 with the system live and no down time.

To upgrade a host the VM's have to be powered off and the host needs to be in maintenance mode. Unless you run a vSphere Cluster with the VM's on shared storage and vMotion enabled there's no way to update without downtime of the VM's.

André

[markmyers]

Well this is what I was afraid of. However i just needed to confirm my fears. Bottom line is i will have to put this upgrade is on hold forever. 4.1 will have to do. for future referance can the esxi be upgraded by the command line like i do patches. or do you need to do it by a bootable media

Ty

[a_p_]

... can the esxi be upgraded by the command line like i do patches

No, the options for upgrading 4.x to 5.x are Interactive (CD/USB), Update Manager or Scripted installation (kickstart). For details take a look at the Upgrade Guide

André