Upgrading ESX 3.5 to vSphere

[sens007]

So how painful is it? I've installed ESX 3.5 from scratch but never an upgrade. Here's what we have.

- 2 x ESX 3.5 servers w/ about 50 VMs running on each server

- 4TB SAN where the VMs are resides (split into 2 datastores)

- Lab Manager 2.53

- We do not use virtualcenter!

I'm looking through the documents and I'm a little confused. My first thought is that we would have to shutdown all VMs then stick in the CD and viola, start to upgrade. However, I doubt that's the case and I'm starting to see why this is the case. Unless I'm mistaken, but do I have to migrate my VMs to another storage? The "Example Upgrade Scenarios" point to having an empty host storage to hold my VMs.

is this true?

[yougotiger0]

When we did our upgrade from 3.5 we simply vmotioned everything running on the host off and then did a full install from the Boot CD and vmotioned them back. Since all our VMDK files reside on the SAN, we didn't have to worry about losing any data on the host's internal drives. If you truly are running your VM's from the SAN, then that shouldn't be an issue. Here's a couple things we ran into:

-Document your all your settings before beginning - All the networking will need to be recreated, the switches etc. So document it all before starting. Docment any changes that need to be put back in. We did one of our servers without documenting correctly and luckily had what we needed to recreate but then had a better idea of what we needed to document.

-If you are using iSCSI, you'll have to recreat initiators, and may need to update your SAN to allow the new initiators. (we did) so that when you scan you can find the LUN's on the SAN again.

-if you name them different, you may need to update your DNS servers to match.

[sens007]

Don't forget, we don't use virtualcenter, so are you suggesting I install vcenter first and then use vmotion?

The biggest issue I have is how does lab manager fit into all this? We've been told that LM 2.53 runs our infrastructure.

If I make any changes through the viclient, I may end up screwing things with LM.

In regards to the SAN, if I were to "re-map" the datastores back into vcenter, won't it want to "format" the datastore before it adds it?

[yougotiger0]

I guess what I meant to illustrate, is that upgrade of the Host shouldn't effect the files stored on the LUN. We didn't have any problem with VMware trying to format anything on the SAN. We just had to create new iSCSI initiators and then use the the iSCSI initiator ID on the SAN to allow the host to talk to the SAN. Once they were talking, we just rescaned, found the LUN and added it. VMFS didn't need upgraded so we didn't have any trouble.

I don't know how LM works at all we haven't used it at all, but when we did our upgrade it was a cinch. but LM could make it harder...

[AndreTheGiant]

Without vCenter you must install new vSphere Client with Host update utility.

With this tool you can use the ESX 4.0 ISO and update your existing host.

There is a downtime.

After the host upgrade, upgrade all VMware Tools.

And at this point (if needed) upgrade the VM virtual hardware version.

Note that you cannot run the CD directly to make a in-line upgrade.

For LabManager you must upgrade to LM 4.0 (which support vSphere).

Andre