Should I Upgrade from esx 4.1 to 5 now?

[tammcl]

Hi,

I have a 2 node cluster running esx4.1 that I have been testing and about to deploy into production with about 15 vms. The majority will be migrated from

a single esx 4 box using local disks.

Since I have a small environment I am inclined to upgrade to esxi5 now, before I deploy to production. Since I only have 1 vcentre box and 2 hosts, I think it

would be riskier and more difficult to upgrade once in production.

Can anyone give me a good reason not to upgrade now?

[AWo]

I will start the first 5 as a test server to see how it behaves and if we're going to face problems immediately.

That a test migration is performed to see how it handles the conversion to the new VMFS.

It won't be used as a production system without having it running for some virtual test servers before and without having checked if all vital functions and the ones used very often are tested.

Reasons why not to migrate a production system immediately?

- Getting things not running on our old (and maybe) newer hardware

- Errors within the migration process

- Chance to get the VMFS destroyed for what ever reason.

- and all kind of issues you may face when you update an Operation system (bugs, etc).

As everything is up and running very well we have no pressure to be the first ones to face them....

But we start to test very early.

AWo

[Cyberfed27]

We have a 5 host ESXi 4.1 cluster running vCenter 4.1

I decided to upgrade one of my hosts to ESXi 5.0 today.

I am getting an error when trying to add the host back into the cluster saying:

vCenter does not support hosts of this type (VMware ESXi 5.0.0)

So just a heads up, you may need to upgrade to vCenter 5 before it will accept ESXi 5 hosts.

Going to poke around and see if I can get more information.

[tammcl]

Yes, you do need to upgrade to vCentre 5.0 first.

Since we only have 1 vcentre and  2 hosts, upgrading when in production would be a risk as we could be left with:

1) no vcentre

2)  only 1 host which leaves a vulnerability

At least if I upgrade now, I can test using my test vms.

[RParker]

Cyberfed27 wrote:

So just a heads up, you may need to upgrade to vCenter 5 before it will accept ESXi 5 hosts.

Going to poke around and see if I can get more information.

Hmm... Gee is that why they have these things called "instructions" that mentions this BEFORE you start.  Not to mention EVERY single ESX / vCenter has required an upgrade to vCenter BEFORE you can support later versions of ESX.  This is not new.

So go talk to the spanish guy ..his name is MANUAL!