Installing VMware Tools from vSphere 4.1 without any vSphere 4.1 servers

[hmartin]

I'm planning my upgrade from VMware View 4.01 to 4.5. All ESX servers are running ESX or ESXi 4.0.x. We are delaying our 4.1 upgrade due to this issue. Our View environment includes a number of full clone desktops, so we have to upgrade VMware Tools and the View Agent on all these VMs.

Since the View Agent has to be reinstalled after any VMware Tools upgrades, I'd like to go ahead and install the VMware Tools from vSphere 4.1 and then install the View 4.5 Agent. That way, we won't have any VM service interruption as a result of the vSphere 4.1 upgrade.

Does anyone see a problem with this idea?

[logiboy123]

VMware Tools is backwards compatible, so you shouldn't have a problem with your upgrade process. You need to upgrade to View 4.5 before upgrading the agents, but neither of these steps requires vCenter 4.1.

You will need to upgrade to vCenter 4.1 before you can upgrade your View Composer Desktop Pools or View Clients. Further information around this can be found in the upgrade guide, section 5.

As always you should make complete backups of all components before an upgrade. I recently completed a vCenter and View upgrade to a different 64bit server with a new database. Whole process took about 12 hours, but I had issues with the existing environment, service accounts etc.

Recommended reading is the upgrade guide;

Regards,

Paul Kelly

[hmartin]

Thanks for the response. I've been through the upgrade guide, but it understandably does not cover a scenario where the VMware Tools software is upgraded absent of any 4.1 servers, so I just wanted to see if there were any issues that I hadn't considered. We don't use View Composer, so I'm not planning on upgrading vCenter Server until we are ready to introduce our first ESXi 4.1 server. In this situation, I don't know of any reason why we can't upgrade the View Client software prior to the vCenter upgrade. Did I miss something in the upgrade guide?

[logiboy123]

Upgrading View Composer Desktop Pools is the only component that the upgrade guide specifies as requiring vCenter 4.1. If you don't use this component then there is nothing standing in the way of you doing an upgrade for the view clients.

Regards,

Paul Kelly

[RParker]

Does anyone see a problem with this idea?

It's not a requirement to reboot the guest tools post install... So you still don't need to worry about it. I agree with being ahead, but it's not as much impact as you think.

[hmartin]

Thanks for the response. What I'm trying to avoid to having to install the View Agent twice. As I understand it, it's important to reinstall the View Agent after installing / upgrading VMware Tools. Therefore, if I upgrade the View Agent immediately after upgrading to View 4.5 (optional, but a good idea) and then upgrade ESXi from 4.0 Update 2 to 4.1, I'll have to install VMware Tools and then reinstall the View Agent. Also, since we plan to phase in v4.1, having all VMs running upgraded VMware Tools means I don't have to worry about any Tools issues when VMs get VMotion'd between the 4.0 and 4.1 servers.

What I'm having a difficult time with now is locating the VMware Tools ISO for Windows VMs. It's beginning to look like I'll have to install ESXi 4.1 in a Fusion VM, "jailbreak" it, and jank the ISO out of the filesystem. If anyone knows of an easier way, I would appreciate any tips.

[a_p_]

You can download the tools separately from http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

André

Forum Upgrade Notice:

VMware will be upgrading VMware Communities systems between 10-12 December 2010. During this time, the system will be placed in READ-ONLY mode.

[hmartin]

Awesome - thanks!