Upgrade remote ESXI 4.1 to ESXi 5.5: no phy access

[RyGuy1860]

Hi,

I have conducted some research and I realize that the best way to upgrade the small deployment host ESXi 4.1 is the interactive CD mode. Unfortunately, the server is in another country. Is there a way to remotely do that? In addition, I don't have any way of moving the guest servers off, for safe keeping unless I create an ovf template. Is that sufficient, for the host software upgrade process? Obviously this is a production machine.

Thank you,

Ryan

[abhilashhb]

Can you get someone to go mount the CD? Someone has to have access right? It can be done remotely using the KVM console depending on the type of server you are using.

[RyGuy1860]

Ok, so I was afraid of that! So, assuming that I have that special someone who can do that, and assuming that all the drivers are good (I've heard about 5.5 missing some drivers), what is recommended for protection of the guests?

Since I'm something of a new person to using ESXi, I want to be sure that they are ok. I know the key is to UPGRADE and not INSTALL. But beyond that, anything else recommended.

Thank you 1/2 after and 1/2 in advance!

Ryan

[abhilashhb · Accepted solution]

If downtime is an option, which obviously is needed, you can just upgrade the host without affecting the machines. The machines will be present on a datastore and they will not be on the disk that hosts Esxi OS (unless you have all of it on just one disk, which is very wrong thing to do).

Its almost like a windows machine, when you re-install/upgrade the OS the changes/formatting only happens on the OS drive and you still retain the files on other drives.