ESXi 5 upgrade with Nexus 1000v

[fish6288]

I currently have a 4.1 environemnt with nexus 1000v ver 4.0(4) SV1 (3).

I know to upgrade the hosts to version 5 I would need to upgrade the nexus to the newest version but before i can do anything i have to upgrade the vCenter server to version 5. My question is ....if i upgrade vCenter server to version 5 will it continue to operate ok with the nexus 1000v ver 4.0(4) SV1 (3)?

I havent been able to find anything on that, all i find is that ESXi 5 would require an updated version of the Nexus 1000v but nothing that stas if vCetner server would continue to work ok with the older VEM/VSM. Since vCenter and the VSM/VEM are tightly integrated i would hate to upgrade to vCenter 5 and all the suddent all my host's networking stopped working cause it didnt work with the older VSM and VEM.

[NotAvailable]

Same question from our customers. We need detailed information about the upgrade of vSphere 4.1 w/ Nexus 1000.

- Prerequisites

- vCenter upgrade

- ESX / ESXi upgrade

and whatever might be interesting... the only info I found is

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-upgrade...
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.update_manager.doc_50/GUID-740...
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus1000/sw/4_2_1_s_v_1_4_a/compatibility/infor...

But an explicit howto on the complete upgrade process would be very helpful!

cheers

Marcus

[Q_Nine]

Any update on this? Did you ever perform ths upgrade and if so how did it go?

We have a similar setup and would like to move forward with vCenter 5, but do not want to impact network connectivity on our product hosts using 1000v.

[fish6288]

Upgradeing to vCenter Server 5 first broke the VSM to vCenter connection. Even though nothing was lost at that moment we could no longer make changes to the VSM and have vCenter see them. The VEMs on each host kept their setting so we never lost host connectivity but we couldnt make any changes.

You will need to FIRST upgrade the VEMs on each host and then the VSM. Once those are upgraded you can then upgrade the vCenter server to version 5 and all should be well...then you can upgrade the hosts one at a time to version 5 as you please.

Watch for the correct VEM module for your vSphere release...if you are using verison 4.1 then their is a certain VEM to install. In our case it was cross_cisco-vem-v131-4.2.1.1.4.1.0-2.0.1.vib (we have hosts running version 4.1).

[bjacobsen]

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but just wanted to confirm that after manually upgrading your VEMs and VSMs, connectivity with vCenter was restored and no adverse effects were seen? I have a customer who upgraded vCenter without realizing the 1000v compatibilities, and their SV1(3) 1000v is refusing to connect to vCenter due to the API differences.

[fish6288]

Yes once we manually upgraded the VEMs and VSMs everything went back to working.  We did the VEMs first and then the VSMs. Once this was done everything started working again just fine.