ESX 4 / 3.5 mixed cluster

[AntonVZhbankov]

One customer asked me if he can run ESX4 and 3.5 in the same cluster.

I know that it's technically possible, I upgraded from 3.5 to 4 this way. But he wants to run cluster for a long time with 2 ESX4 and 2 ESX3.5 hosts.

Is it supported? Any technical issues?

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AllBlack]

yes you can. You will obviously need to run vcenter4.

It is in the documentation. I will see if I can find which doco it was.

Cheers

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[AllBlack · Accepted solution]

Page 37 of the upgrade guide

You can manage ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 hosts in the same cluster with ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 hosts. You can manage ESX

2.x as standalone hosts in a vCenter Server system. ESX 2.x hosts cannot be added to clusters.

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[AndreTheGiant]

But he wants to run cluster for a long time with 2 ESX4 and 2 ESX3.5 hosts.

Remember to install a license server for the old ESX 3.x hosts.

Andre

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[hmundt]

It is supported, but you should only upgrade the virtual hardware after the cluster is all ESX 4. This means you cannot use some of the new features (like hotplug, PCI passthrough etc.) until then