I've got a small production 2.5.4 setup. 2 hosts, no SAN or VC. We just expanded and added 2 more 3.0.1 hosts that are connected to a SAN and managed by VC. I need to take my two 2.5.4 host and upgrade them to 3.0.1 and add them to the SAN and VC farm. I just wanted to run my plan by some people smarter than me and see how it looks:
1. Add two 2.5.4 hosts to virtual center
2. Cold migrate VMs to the 2 new 3.0.1 hosts. This should automaticaly upgrade them to Vi3 format, right? I have plenty of capacity to run them on the new hosts for now.
3. Once all VMs are running on the new hosts, remove the old 2.5 ESX hosts from VC.
4. Add them to the SAN Fabric and update masks so they can see the VMFS LUNs
5. Install and configure ESX 3.0.1 on two "old" boxes
6. Re-add to virtual center
7. Redistribute VMs across VM farm
8. Anything else?
Any feedback/alternate methods would be appreciated
After you cold migrate you need to upgrade hardware and VMware tools on the VMs. Might want to swap steps 4 and 5 just to be safe. Would hate to accidently destroy one of your VMFS partitions on a LUN.
fyi...here's some good reading material for upgrading....
Upgrade from ESX 2.x to ESX 3.0:
Virtual Infrastructure 3: Beta to Production - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/mdc5173.pdf
Understanding Virtual Infrastructure Upgrade Moving to the new ESX 3.0/VC2.0 Release - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9809.pdf
Details of What's New and Improved in VMware Infrastructure 3 - http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/whatsnew_esx301_vc201.html
Vmware Infrastructure 3 Release Notes - http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/releasenotes_esx301_vc201.html
Planning a Upgrade to Vmware Infrastructure 3 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_upgrade_plan.pdf
Vmware ESX 3.x Server and VirtualCenter 2.x Upgrade Guide - http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/docs/vmwdocs/ESX3.x-VC2-upgradeguide.pdf
Upgrading your VI2 to VI3 - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=25
Dmotion
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=537909
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=490197
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=491752
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=613306