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fq13
Contributor
Contributor

Updating from ESXi 5.0 to 5.1

I apologize in advance if this scenario has been covered many times. I am upgrading a standalone 5.0 host to 5.1, except that the I will be installing 5.1 onto a different storage. Currently 5.0 is installed on internal storage, but I will be installing 5.1 onto a flash drive, so the previous installation will not be detected and settings will not be automatically carried over. My question is: with the new installation of 5.1, will ESX automatically detect the existing VM's on the local datastore and import them? Or will I need to complete some additional steps? I will be setting the same IP address and configuration on the new esx5.1.

Any assistance will be appreciated. Thanks.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

When you run an installation rather than an upgrade, you need to configure the host (networking etc.) and then re-add the VM's to the inventory by right clicking the .vmx files on the Datastore Browser. There's no need to install ESXi on a different storage (e.g. flash drive), you can interactively install ESXi on the host (preserving the VMFS datastores), which will overwrite the previous ESXi installation and start with default settings.

André

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fq13
Contributor
Contributor

Got it, thanks Andre. We were hoping to utilize the built-in storage by moving the hypervisor onto a USB drive. And if I am not mistaken, even though the VM's and the hypervisor are on different LUNs, the best practice is to have the hypervisor on a USB or SD card. But I could be wrong about that.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Are you going to remove the local storage on which you currently have ESXi installed?

From what I understood the VM's are on the same local storage as the Hypervisor? The only advantage I see in installing the Hypervisor on USB/SD is to run the host diskless, in case you have shared storage. If you are going to install ESXi on USB/SD with the current installation still on the disk, you might receive an error message during installation about a second ESXi instance being present.

André

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