Suggestion on upgrading from ESX3.5 to ESXi4.1 in mixed environment

[vmhyperv]

Hi Folks,
   Just wanted to know regarding upgrading from ESX3.5 to ESXi 4.1. In my environment there are 40 ESX having version 3.5 and 2 ESX having 4.0 with storage  consisting of SAN and DAS but due to budget constraints  we are upgrading only 5 ESX to ESXi 4.1 and rest may be later on.Need to know that keeping all these ESX of diffirent version in a mixed environment in different cluster will be any problem from point view  of performance.Any suggestion will be much appreciated.Vcenter version is 4.1

thanks
vmguy

[weinstein5]

With vCenetr at 4.1 you should have no issues since it can manage both ESX/ESXi 3.x and 4.x hosts just a couple of suggestiions -

• Do not mix clusters - keep the ESX .3.5 together and  ESXi 4.1 together
  
• Do not upgrade the virtual hardware until all hosts are upgraded to 4.1 - because ESX/ESXi 4.x support virtual hardware version 4 and 7 while ESX 3.5 only supports virtual hardware 4
  

[vmhyperv]

Hi,

I have upgraded  few of the VMs  having  version 4 to 7 and nic adaptor to VMNET3 though  these ESXi completly resides in seperate Cluster.Please suggests.

thanks

vmguy

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

They will work fine on ESX 4.x servers = you will not be able to move them the ESX 3.5 hosts without downgrading the virtual hardware