Just wondering...how many of you 3.5 U4 users are going to be upgrading to 4.0, wait a few weeks? Months? Since this is a whole new version...what are everyone's thoughts on upgrading??
motherboard ... which DID work in 3.5
Just remember what ESXi 3.5 was like.
Update 1 fixed a number of major issues. Shortly after Update 2 fixed so many major issues that you'd read the changenotes and wonder how people running the initial release ever kept a server alive. Update 3 finally got stable HA working. This is the nature of rewritten products. Even if I can bring a cluster online, I would hate the thought of having to organise five patch/reboot cycles in the next two months as major updates come out.
Development environment has been upgraded however.
Ha Ha Ha you have just written the history of Microsoft, and it goes on to this day. I like it.
For now I just did a clean install on one of my test rigs, a 680i MB with Quad-Core 6600 running on it. Interesting thing is that ESX 3.5 wouldn't recognize the onboard SATA on my other test machine and I needed to use an Adaptec Sil3512a chip SATA card make it functional. Now, 4.0 has no problem with that and boots right off the MB which for a test machine is nice.
Like everyone I'm not eager to rush into production machines. We already have 2008 Servers running on ESX and they're not bug free yet so no need to add another layer of possible instability to the mix. I do like some of the new features and rearranging of menus but otherwise haven't been running it long enough to make a reasonable judgement.
What issues do you have with 2008 Server?
I am curious to this also...I have had some odd experiences with it myself under VM...
For 2008 we've had random and seemingly more frequent lockups when the server is under heavy I/O (like during backups) that we didn't have with 2003 server. I hesitate to actually blame 2008 though because we have anything but a "controlled test environment". Its a mix of clean installs, P2V conversions and updates 1-4 so something could easily have gotten broken along the way.
For my tests with ESX 4.0 I'm only testing out 2008 and some virtual appliances first. So far I like ntop for traffic monitoring.
I have upgraded ESX cluster with test VM's to vSphere GA immediately. And I think I'm going to upgrade production cluster in a month.
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VMware vExpert '2009
I'm currently building two new clusters that needs to be up and running the next couple of weeks so there's little time to even evaluate vSphere right now. There are lots of features I want but too much uncharted territory as well, so we'll probably be evaulating vSphere during the fall and maybe upgrade sometime this winter.
will be wait for the 1st release even for the dev server.
I'll wait for some success stories and will studiously read the community threads
So I'll wait until vSphere 4 is known to be pretty stable before upgrading the production environment.
-- Pedo mellon a minno --
Seems like a lot of people dont the whole 'upgrade thing' and instead do a new full install on a new server and move their VM's.....
Very few of us trust upgrades. New installs are cleaner.
This is my first full blown upgrade. I started on 3.5 U1 and moved up to U4 now, but never did a full system upgrade to a new version before. From what I am reading its almost 80/20, with people leaning towards fresh installs instead of upgrades. Does anyone think that this version may be better in the upgrade department so we dont need to do full installs?
I have been vigoresly testing it on one of the test machines I have, I did the whole upgrade from the beginning on that machine and have not had any issues as of yet.. I think its strange that I have not had issues as I know sometime something will jump up.. I am just waiting. Even though I am ichy to upgrade my production machines I am not doing it till I am real comfortable and hear some other peoples opinions and successes..
For those with whitebox machines I would definately wait until I could verify that my hardware worked. Especially machines that required modifications to get it to install in the first palce.
s1xth
I don't know about anyone else but I practice my upgrades or fresh installs. If you have identical hardware it is easier but it is worth doing no matter what . See what you run in to in a non critical upgrade.
Since I use USB it is a snap to do a fresh install. Pop in a new USB stick, start up the machine and import the configuration. If everything falls apart I can pop in the old USB stick.
waiting for SP1 release of the V4
I have a new datacenter going in, but won't be functional for another couple months. I dropped in 20 new hosts the other day with vSphere 4.0, I have to say that host profiles made the configuration much easier to replicate across all the hosts. Normally I'd have to build a custom kickstart and drop it out there, but it was a snap. I also upgraded these hosts from ESXi 3.5.0u4 to ESXi 4.0 using the new update manager. Upgrading and configuring took less than 2 hours, which would have taken more than 8 in the past.