Review my upgrade plan - 4.6.0 to 5.1.1

[moullas]

Hi there.

Want a sanity check. I'm planning an upgrade from View 4.6.0 / vCenter 4.1 / ESXi 4.1u3 to View 5.1.1 / vCenter 5.0 u1b / ESXi 5.0.1

My client machines are currently running the 4.6.0 client.

Want to minimize reboots and downtime, so here goes:

1. Upgrade connection servers to 4.6.1 (stated as the minimum to go to 5.1.1)
2. Upgrade connection servers to 5.1.1
3. Upgrade vCenter to 5.0 u1b
4. Upgrade ESXi hosts to 5.0.1
5. Upgrade VMWare Tools / Machine hardware version
6. Upgrade VMWare View Agents to 5.1.1 on desktops
7. Upgrade to View Client 5.1.1 on client machines

Any gotchas in the plan?

When I upgrade the Connection server to 5.1.1 will the 4.6.0 clients be able to connect?

If yes, can I upgrade the clients to 5.1.1 and be able to connect to the current 4.6.0 connection servers?

Anything else?

[vedeht]

That's pretty much what i have done in the past.  If you need your clients to be able to connect then create a replica connection broker and just point all your clients to it during the upgrade.  If all your clients are configured to connect to server01.domain.com internally use a DNS record of view.domain.com and move all your clients to this if possible.  Not sure of your infrastructure so this might not be possible.  Then its a matter of changing the dns record to switch to the upgraded replica.

The upgrade to View 5.1.1 is pretty quick.  You will barely have any downtime.  Any clients that were connected to their virtual desktop (not using a security server) will stay connected regardless of the upgrade.  Remember those internal connections connect directly to the windows vdi image.

[nzorn]

Don't forget to upgrade Composer on vCenter or a standalone server.

[chaz112182]

im preparing to do the same this weekend. im going from 5.0.1 to 5.1.1

vsphere environment is 4.1 update 1

feel free to drop me a msg if you wan to cross check notes, etc.

[vedeht]

Well played!  You need to make sure you upgrade composer to 3.x.