migrating from 4 to esxi 5.1: VMtools + virtual HW update?

[ricky73]

I migrated to ESXi 4.1 to ESXi 5.1 U2, but I need to know if it's requirements to update both VMware tools and virtual hardware for every virtual machines.

What advantages I can get from hw update ?

I think that vmware tools update can improve memory management by host and performance... but virtual hardare update !?!?

[virtualdive]

Hi Ricky,

yes it is a must requirement to upgrade the VM Tools and H/W post the vSphere upgrade.

VM Tools - will give you the advantage of the latest drivers and features available in the newer version.

Virtual H/W - will give you the 1TB RAM suppport, improved 3D graphics, no reboot for VM Tools installation/upgrade, benefits for CPU/RAM and Storage dependencies.

Thanks,

[ScreamingSilenc]

Please follow the upgrade steps as mention in this KB VMware KB: Upgrading a virtual machine to the latest hardware version (multiple versions)

[JarryG]

"...yes it is a must requirement to upgrade the VM Tools and H/W post the vSphere upgrade..."

KB 1010675: "...You can upgrade the hardware version of virtual machines to the latest version of ESXi in use. For virtual machines that are running on ESXi 5.x, VMware recommends that you upgrade the virtual hardware to the latest available version..."

"can" or "recommend" does not sound like "must" to me. I'm personally running a few quite old VMs with lower hw-version, without any problem. As for vm-tools, you may use them, but they are not required at all. My VMs are happy without them...

[suj27]

It's certainly not a must requirement, the VMs should run as normal with older tools. With regards to the VMware Tools, keeping it updated will close off any security vulnerabilities (there were quite few known vulnerabilities with older versions). For the VM hardware version, it depends on any features that you might want to use, some to note for vmx-09 would be no need of reboots during VMware Tools install, improved 3D graphics support and virtualized hardware virtualization. Otherwise the version 7 from vSphere 4.x should be fine.

[ScreamingSilenc]

Upgrading to latest H/W version and VMtools is totally up to the user and their business needs. But you end up not using lots of good supported features thats comes with latest H/W version.

Check the supported features diff between the H/W versions here vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center

[etorre46 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ricky,

To sumamrize it, the different vHW versions can open additional features for BIOS, EFI, maximum CPUs, maximum memory, PCI slots, so if you're on current hardware, you can benefit from the latest vHW version.  Take a look at the link that Mustafa posted for all the details.  One catch - if you don't have the vSphere web client already installed and you're going to 5.5.x, you might want to hold off on doing the vHW upgrade to 10 until you have that in place first, otherwise you won't be able to edit your VM settings without workarounds like using PowerCLI or a rip and replace of .vmx to force a vHW downgrade.

If you choose to upgrade the vHW, then make sure you first upgrade the VMware tools, otherwise your VMs might lose their network settings (I tried it before and it actually can happen).  Be wary though, to make sure you you don't encounter any issues with your VMFS version when upgrading to the latest vHW version.  all this info is covered in the following KB Article

VMware KB: Upgrading a virtual machine to the latest hardware version (multiple versions)

Damn, I didnt' realize how old this article was LOL... still shows as unanswered though!

[ricky73]

Thank to all.

I updated all VMware tools for all machines and now I'm updating virtual harware but beforehand I'm creating the snapshots.

When I already updated virtual hardware, can I have problems only in startup stage? I'm asking about it because I'm trying to understand how much time to keep my snapshot for every machine to retrieve my previous VM version;

I think that VM where a database lives it's need from few minutes stopping db service, in other case where only services live max. 2-3 days. What do you think?

[raffic_ncc]

Ricky,

You can take a snapshot before upgrading the Virtual Hardware.. I see few instances upgrading Virtual Hardware version disconnects from the network due to the new network adapters. I would suggest you to take snapshot before upgradig HW version for safer side.you can revert to your old HW version, if you face some other issue with your VM. It is fully supported in 5.1. 

It is not recommended to keep the snapshots for long period. You can delete the snapshots within few hours after you upgraded to latest version , If you didn't faced any issue with your VM.

If you want to upgrade your VM hardware version without losing network settings. Please take a look at the below article

http://www.vmwarearena.com/2013/09/upgrade-vmware-vm-hardware-version.html

Thanks,

Mohammed