Upgrade Assistance

[prutter]

I am about to upgrade to View 4.5 but am also upgrading vCenter from 4.0 to 4.1. Are there any Database issues that i need to be aware or for Composer? Does it need a 64 or 32bit DSN? Any compatability issues at all that i need to be soncerned with? Do i need to upgrade vCenter and vsphere first before teh View upgrade? Any help or comments are welcome. Thanks for a great site.

Perry

[mikebarnett]

Hi Perry,

I am going to assume a couple of things and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

I would recommend the following process:

1. Upgrade your Connection Server to 4.5 first

- If you are staying on 32-bit for your CS, great you're done

- If you want to go to a 64-bit CS there is a different process for that and I can help with that if you like

2. Test to make sure you can still connect to desktops and login to your 4.5 broker admin.

3. Upgrade Composer to version 2.5 on your VC

- Also upgrade VC to 4.0 U2 at this point if it's not there already as that's the version that View 4.5 supports

4. Create one test pool to make sure that composer is still working OK against VC

5. Then migrate your existing VC and Composer to the new 64-bit server

- This, of course, assumes that you are currently running VC on 32-bit (which I'm assuming since that's the only 'supported' way to run View Composer for View 4.0...)

6. Test again to make sure everything is working at this point

7. Then complete your upgrade to vCenter 4.1

This process is one that we are recommending to make sure that all components are working during the upgrade of your server. Please make sure you have backups of EVERYTHING before you begin this process as it is more convoluted because of the switching to 64-bit. If you have questions let me know.

-Mike

[mittim12]

Here is a link to the upgrade guide to if you would like to review.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/view45_upgrade_guide.pdf

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpful/Correct buttons to award points

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mittim12

[prutter]

Hi Mike,

We are eventually take everything to 64bit but for the time being just waht needs to go now will get converted. I know vCenter requires a 64bit server now. All of our databases (view composer included) are on a remote SQL server that is currently 32 bit and i just want to make sure that we have no issues during this upgrade. As for the Composer DB, If i upgrade composer on the vCenter i currently run (4.0 U2) is there any that we need to watch out for and should i still go with this sequence of events for the upgrade as you outlined? Thantks again for the help. I really appreciate it!

Perry

[mikebarnett]

Hi Perry,

Ok, great. Thanks for the further details.

If everything is remote then you are good to go. Because Composer now supports 64-bit you won't have any issues with the database. Just use the built in Data Sources GUI in Windows (no need to select a specific one) to create your ODBC connection and you should be good to go!

-Mike

[prutter]

Do i need to create a 32bit or 64 bit DSN?

[mikebarnett]

Just create the DSN with the Data Sources window available from the Administrative tools. It will automatically create the correct one but in this case if you are on 64-bit it will need a 64-bit DSN.

-Mike

[DataSolutionsGr]

We had a client that found creating the 64-bit DSN for vCenter was a little tricky.

Make sure you get the 64-bit version of the SQL Native Client (our client was running SQL 2005) installed before you create the System DSN. To create this we have used both versions of the ODBC administrator to create the DSN. Look for c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe and c:\windows\system32\odbcad32.exe.