Adding Host during upgrade

[prutter]

Hello All,

Currnetly have 2 Hosts running ESX 3.5U4 that i would like to upgrade during the addition of a new 4.0 host (#3). Kind of curious what the best route would be to get this all accomplished. Can i update vCenter to version 4 and still be able to see my 3.5 Hosts? I Thought about updating vCenter, then installing the third Host, and then upgrading the other two Hosts to version 4. Is this a posible track to getting this done or are there problems? Any help is appreciated with this. Thanks

Perry

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Hello.

Can i update vCenter to version 4 and still be able to see my 3.5 Hosts?

Yes.

I Thought about updating vCenter, then installing the third Host, and then upgrading the other two Hosts to version 4. Is this a posible track to getting this done or are there problems?

This sounds like a great approach.

Any help is appreciated with this. Thanks

Make sure to check out the Upgrade Guide, as it has a lot of great information in it as well.

Good Luck!

[prutter]

Thanks for the quick response. I am currently on page 30 of the upgrade guide. Not as interesting as a spy novel though! So my approach should work oK? I guess the biggest issues i had were with vCenter and the new install. Is there anything special about the ne install that i should look out for? I never did the actual install to the 3.5 hosts. All the upgrades were straight forward but never did a fresh install.

Are there any issues having a 4.0 Host in the cluster along with the 3.5U4 Hosts? Thanks again for the quick reply!!

[vmroyale]

The approach sounds good. If you have SAN storage, you might want to disconnect it to ensure that you don't install on the wrong volume. Other than that, just make sure you have backups of everything and then test each step (upgrade vCenter, install ESX 4.0 host, upgrade or clean install old hosts, etc) thoroughly. Don't try to do it all in one day would be my advice.

The 3.5 U4 hosts are fine running alongside the 4.0 host - you can verify it in the vSphere Compatibility Matrixes.

[prutter]

I do have SAN storage. What are you referring to when you say don't install on the wrong volume? Are you referring to vCenter or the new Host? On that note, is it a good idea to install the new host OS while disconnected?

[vmroyale]

On the ESX hosts, you can pull the connections to the storage for the install. The idea is that there is no way to install ESX on a VMFS volume that is housing virtual machines, if the storage is unavailable at that time. Once the install is complete, you can connect the storage again.

You can leave the storage connected, but just make 100% sure you have the correct install volume. If you aren't booting these hosts from the SAN, this would be something like a local RAID mirror and would likely be much smaller than a typical VMFS volume. The disconnect approach is a bit more foolproof.

[prutter]

Got it! Thanks for the help!! Really appreciate it!