Upgrade

[dpvreno]

Good Afternoon,

     I have been put in charge of a little project and was getting a little overwhelmed and wanted to see if my thinking is in order.

We have 2 hosts running exi3.5 and a vm with vcenter 4.1 to administer them. We purchased two new servers and would like to migrate the vms from the old to the new and upgrade to exsi5.x and vcenter 5.x in the process. The current vcenter does NOT have upgrade manager loaded. So this is my thoughts

1) Download/enable update manager (where? I couldnt find)

2) upgrade exsisting hosts to 4.0 and then 5.0 (you cannot go directly correct?)

3) upgrade vcenter to 5.0

4) bring up new servers with exsi5.x

5) add new hosts to vcenter

6) migrate vm's to new hosts

7) toss out the old and drink a beer.

Am i missing something? Is this the correct thinking on this?

Thanks for the information.

-Dave

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Commuity,

some thoughts about the steps you mentioned.

0.1) check the VMware Compatibility Guide to see whether the old hosts are supported

0.2) review the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix to see which host versions are supported by which vCenter Server version

--> 1.) Update Manager is included on the vCenter Server installation iso/zip file. You need to use the version which comes with the vCenter Server version you have installed.

--> 2 and 3) See VMware Product Interoperability Matrix

--> 7) Why only one beer?

André

[vmroyale]

What versions/builds of ESXi and vCenter are you working with?

[dpvreno]

Thank you both

ESX is 3.5.0 and server is 4.1.0

[vmroyale]

What about the build numbers? You can find them in the vSphere Client by selecting the vCenter or ESXi host objects in the inventory and then viewing the top line of the right pane. This info is the most important piece to know, since there are compatibility issues between 3.5 and 5.x.

[dpvreno]

3.5.0 64607

4.1.0 345043

[vmroyale]

In addition to checking the VMware Compatibility Guide and VMware Product Interoperability Matrix that André mentioned, here are some things to consider:

1) ESXi 3.5.0 64607 is the GA build, which is not compatible with vCenter 5.1.

2) vCenter Server 5.0 is compatible with ESXi 3.5 U5 (build 207095)

3) ESXi 3.5 hosts are not upgradable to ESXi 5 directly - you would have to go to ESXi 4 first and then do a second upgrade to ESXi 5.

4) Need to verify if your old hardware and new hardware can exist in the same cluster with EVC enabled.

What kind of storage do you have and how many VMs (or how much data) do you have?

[dpvreno]

Thank you all for the information, it is a great start, i will get the other info 'soonish'

[dpvreno]

Thank you all again. We have about 20 vms running on the 2 hosts (10 each), we use the local storage and a Dell 3200 MD SAN.

I was able to install/configure Update Manager and there are 190 patches for each host (has not been patched since 2009). Is it prudent to patch up 3.5 before upgrading to 4.0 or can I just do the upgrade straight out and avoid some pain.

The hosts are both power edge 2950s and the compatibility guide says they are good all the way up to 5.1.

[vmroyale]

Is it prudent to patch up 3.5 before upgrading to 4.0 or can I just do the upgrade straight out and avoid some pain.

The Upgrade Guide and the Product Interoperability Matrixes both state that ESXi 3.5 Update 5 is supported for upgrade. I personally would not stray from this, as being unsupported during an upgrade does not sound like good times.