Upgrading 4.1 to 5.5 and SQL questions

[TandyBrands]

Greetings,

I have been reading articles for days to see if I can figure this out.  I wish to upgrade my whole infrastructure to 5.5.  What I have today:

Four Hosts: HP DL380 G6 w/64 GB memory, 2 (4 core ea) processors @ 2.8 GHz.  I did check the compatability matrix(VMware Compatibility Guide: System Search), and it would seem that is supports 5.5

VCenter Server: Dell R410 w/16 GB memory

EMC iSCSI AX4-5i SAN

Everything is currently running 4.1.  vCenter is on SQL 2005 Express w/SP3.

I have found a deluge of documents and read through many of them. No where near being a SQL admin, I don't want to mess this up.  Found this article about the SQL migration:  Upgrading a vCenter SQL Express database | Virtual-Ice

which gives a fair description of DB upgrading, there are a few questions I have.

From reading here and elsewhere, I may run into ODBC issues after the fact. Some things talk about re-creating the System DSNs (Re: upgrade vCenter from 4.1 to 5.5 best practice), as they seem to not get recreated.  I'm not sure if that's a complicated task or not.

The article mentioned above also states I should do a clean install rather than upgrade from 2005 express to 2008 express.

If I get all this done, I presume datamigration.zip is not applicable to me (only if I were moving to a new server rather than an upgrade, just making sure).

Are there other things I need to be aware of in this process?  Do I download 2008 R2 Express from MS or, is it included on the vCenter Server 5.5 disk I downloaded and burned?

Thanks,

James

[weinstein5]

Did you check VMware's Upgrade Guide - http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-551-upgrad... - as it covers on how to move and upgrade the vCenter Databases

[TandyBrands]

Weinstein5,

Actually, I have been through quite a bit of that document.  Unless I am missing it, the only mentions of DB upgrading is Page 50:

If your database server is not supported by vCenter Server, perform a database upgrade to a supported version or import your database into a supported version. See “Supported Database Upgrades,”  on page 52.

and page 52 which states:

When you upgrade to vCenter Server 5.5, make sure that the upgraded version supports your database. For a list of the specific database versions supported for the version of vCenter Server that you are upgrading to, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix at  http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php.

I am aware that I need to upgrade the DB, I'm needing suggestions on the specifics of that task.

Thanks,

James

[raog]

Is your DB the one bundled with 4.1 or do you have this DB on a separate machine? If its the former, then you can simply upgrade VC by mounting the 5.5 ISO and then running the install. However, in this case the DB version will still remain at 2005. So, if the DB version is important to you to get to 5.5, use the datamigration.zip(this should be available on the 5.0 U3 media) to first go to VC 5.0 Update 3. Note this will move VC to another machine. Now on this machine do the inplace upgrade to 5.5 by mounting the 5.5 ISO.

If you have an external 2005 express DB, then do the migration using the blog/other guides.

Also given that you just have 4 hosts, i wouldn't bother with either and just do a fresh install of 5.5 and then recreate my rules/environment

Regards

Girish

[TandyBrands]

Thanks raog,

The DB is the one that came with 4.0/4.1 (2005 Express). I'm not sure that 5.5 ISO would run since the requirements are 2008, 64 bit (or later).  I would guess it to fail.

Second, unfortunately I don't have another machine to migrate to, and I don't have test machines to test.  I'm in a live environment and would like to keep it running that way

Finally, I'm not sure of the rules that are in place today, which would take a lot of time to come up to speed.  I guess I'm back to taking services off-lie, backup the existing DB, uninstall 2005 Express, install 2008, attached DB's, and then go from there (uninstall 4.1 vcenter server, and install 5.5 vcenter server maybe).  I need to study a bit more on making that work.

Thanks,

James

[JohnnyLeung]

Hello

I have same situation here, I have a physical machine installed vcenter 4.1 Update 1 with bundled SQL express 2005 edition at the beginning, also there is another sql express 2005 for Symantec Backup Exec at the same machine.

In this case, if we want to upgrade the vCenter to 5.5 update1, what would be the steps to upgrade the SQL before upgrade the vCenter, I wish to use the same machine as now after upgrade.

Thank you.

Johnny

[TandyBrands]

Ok,

Since I am not getting anywhere with this, lets ask this.

If I decide not to keep the database, what do I loose?  Can I just uninstall vCenter server 4.1 and the SQL 2005 Express DB, and install the vCenter server 5.5 and SQL 2008 Express and go from there?  I don't need history, which I am suspecting that is what the DB keeps (primarily) for me. Do I loose more than that?

Again, I have 4 hosts attached to an EMC SAN (clarion AX4-5i).  I have 21 VM's running, of which 3 are grouped within a resource pool (Email servers).

Thanks,

James