Downgrade from ESX 4i to ESX 3.5i ?

[chayolle]

Hi everyone,

I really hope you can help me as I have a real big issue here. I converted 4 physical machines for a client where I installed a ESX 4i. For some hardware compatibility issues, I need now to install ESX 3.5i on the server. Is there a way to downgrade the machines to work with 3.5i, even if they were converted to run with 4.0i?

The only possible solution I found is to install the converter into the virtual machines and convert them to a temporary host running v3.5i and then reinstall 3.5i on the server and reconvert it again toward the new 3.5i host. The problem is that it is really slow and need a long downtime as the machines are really big.

Do you guys know a solution that will minimise downtime?

Thanks in advance,

LF

[jayctd]

The procedure you described is the only method I know of to do what you are hoping for.

There are some things you can do to automate the process (Building kickstart install scrips and such beforehand to reduce the downtime of the hosts) but the base process is going to be as you described.

Jered Rassier

*EqualLogic Technical certified professional

*Dell Enterprise Foundations v.2 Certified professional

##If you have found my post has answered your question or helpful please mark it as such##

[beyondvm]

Are these in a cluster? Are you using virtual center?

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[AntonVZhbankov]

If VM are hardware version 4, no problem. Just copy VMs and they will start immediately.

VM hardware version 7 is not compatible with ESX 3.5, but VMware Converter can help.

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[chayolle]

Hi, many thanks for your answer. I would like to have more information about the script thing to automate the process, can you help me with this? I never made such scrpts and actually don't know how to write them. To answer other questions, no they are not in a cluster and I'm not running vCenter...

[bulletprooffool]

Hardware compatability issues?

Perhaps you could share these details and we can resolve those? Save you moving back to 3.5 . . and eventually one day having to move back to 4?

Anythying running on 3.5 should in theory run on 4. Try using the different virtual hardware abvailabe and also, scale down to as few vCopus as possible before scaling back up?