What is the upgade path to upgrade from esxi 4.1 to 6.7

[keithhontz]

I have several standalone esxi legacy servers and need to migrate/upgrade them to esxi 6.7

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance

[daphnissov]

With such an antique version of ESXi, you really should consider backing up any VMs and installing ESXi 6.7 anew IF your hardware is supported. 6.7 removed binary translation and, in so doing, many previously-supported CPUs. Check the HCL to determine if your gear can even run it to begin with, because it's very likely it may not.

[keithhontz]

checked and current hardware is supported. Thus the upgrade...

[daphnissov]

You need to specifically check the CPUs as well. Server make and model matters, but CPU is the kicker. Is/are your CPUs supported as well?

[keithhontz]

yes running an IBM Blade center and ran requirements on the blades and all pass.  The hardest thing is going to be finding the setup files for 5.x to come from 4.x I am not seeing them available for download.

[daphnissov]

Like I said, I'd recommend not doing an in-place upgrade of these hosts if you can. There were so many huge changes between 4.1 and 6.7 I can't even begin to count. It's going to bring over junk settings that may trip you up later.

[Dave_the_Wave]

Have you tried the Lenovo Custom Image for ESXi, they are available for every build.

It's important to use OEM images of ESXi builds, I've discussed that here:

Re: custom ESXi ISO?

It would be a good idea to export every single one of your VMs as templates. You have the odds stacked against you for something to go wrong.

Just think of those poor folks that "upgraded" Xp to Vista. All it did was waste their time, and they ended up re-format and new install anyways.

Best of luck and do keep us posted on anything that goes wrong. Your experiences can be used as an example of what not to do.

[keithhontz]

have successfully gone from 4.1 to 5.0

Now going from 5.0 5.5

Will keep you posted.

[keithhontz]

Found the downloads I needed on Dells site.. they had custom and generic.