Upgrading from ESX 3.5 Server to ESXi 4.0, Any how-to or docs?

[lnxnut]

Hello,

I have been tasked with upgrading from ESX 3.5 server to ESXi 4.0.

Requirements are;

1. Move existing VMs to new platform (all are on an iSCSI SAN)

A. Is there a way to not have to re-add each vm? Any way to do this with powershell?

2. Be able to "fall - back" to 3.5 Server.

Thanks in advance,

Rick

[Troy_Clavell]

if you have vCenter, use Update Manager to upgrade your hosts, it would be the easiest way. But, my suggestion would be a rolling rebuild. vSphere4 is a major release and in my opinion you should start from scratch.

Make sure you upgrade vCenter first, then your Hosts, guest tools and finally the virtual hardware.

....one other thing, if you are going from classic ESX (service console) to ESXi, you have to rebuild, there is no upgrade option.

[lamw]

You'll need to reinstall if you're going to go from classic ESX 3.5 to ESXi 4.0, here are a few best practices on upgrades:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100903...

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101067...

I also would suggest taking a look at the release notes/documentation for vSphere: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esx40_vc40.html

Remember to upgrade your vCenter first prior to upgrading your ESX hosts.

You may want to search the PowerCLI forum to see if someone has created a script to automatically re-register all VM(s) on a given datastore: http://communities.vmware.com/community/developer/windows_toolkit

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[COdlk]

I would start by reading this document

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_upgrade_guide.pdf

I have done a upgrade from 3.5u4 to 4.0 and it went smoothly. That being said it was a dev/test environment.

daivd