Upgrading ESX sever to 3.5

[mail_vijayar]

Hi,

Please let me know if there is any guide that i can follow for upgrading from ESX 3.2 to 3.5.

1. All the VM's are on local storage, would upgrade affect any of these VM's.

2. SHould i upgrade teh VC first and then the hosts?

3. i do not want to do a clean install but only an upgrade is that ok?

Regards,

Vijay

[Troy_Clavell]

1. If all your VM's are on local storage, yes, if the host is off, the VM's will be affected

2. As part of the upgrade to 3.5, you must upgrade your VCMS first

3. My preference for upgrades are fresh installs, but an in place upgrade will work as well.

See upgrade guide

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_upgrade_guide.pdf

hope this helps

[weinstein5]

Here is VMware's upgrade guide -

- it will have all the informaiton you need

I would upgrade VC first and then your host -

[azn2kew]

I've implemented several upgrades from ESX 3.0.2 to ESX 3.5 for clients and it works fine with local storage. I wish they have SAN and VMotion in placed but not all clients have that kind of budget.

To get start.

1. Backup your virtual center database

2. Backup all your virtual machines (vmdk, vmx etc..) to anything that you can using large USB drives could be fine or create NFS server and dump all the vmdk to it for protection.

3. Download latest packages for both ESX and VC server.

4. Run the VC server component and proceed with the upgrade wizard and it should be fine if you know your database credentials and servername. It will make minor changes to your database records but should be fine.

5. Make sure VC server services and license server are running and launch it to see all the hosts and VMs are running normally.

6. Gracefully shutdown all your guest machines and enter maintenance mode.

7. Download latest package ESX 3.5 U2 upgrade package and you can do it from service console or using CD boot it up and press "Enter" and choose upgrade and make sure do not ERASE your existing drive since your guests is store locally.

8. It is very fast to upgrade all you do it choose basic options and be done in 10-15 minutes.

9. Once upgraded, check current version with "vmware -v" command to see if it is the package you've installed.

10. Use browser point to newly install ESX host and download latest VI Client and use it to connect to the virtual center server and make changes to your ESX host SC RAM from 272mb to 800mb.

11. Patch your host if you have anything in place if not install Update Manger works great.

12. Power on all your VM and test it to make sure everything is working as planned.

I suggest you implement some sort of cheap SAN solution such as OpenFiler, FreeNAS, or NFS IET Fedora Core frees and even Xtravirt Virtual SAN Appliance is perfect. Good luck!

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant