About to upgrade from 3.02 to 3.5 - is this correct?

[chipflyer]

I am running 3 ESX 3.02 servers with SAN storage, Virtual Center, and HA. I have upgraded my virtual center server to 2.5 and I am now ready to upgrade a host server to 3.5. It looks like from the upgrade guide that I can simply put one of the hosts in maintinance mode, do the upgrade then add it back to the DRS cluster.

Is it really that easy?

If I am upgrading licensed servers, will I have to do anything at all with licensing? Will I need new keys?

Thank you,

Jeff

[java_cat33 · Accepted solution]

Yes upgrade your license server (not a requirement - but recommended if your license server is old) - your existing license file will be OK assuming your license server is OK.

VMotion your VM's to your other hosts (put your ESX host in maintenance mode), put ESX 3.5 install media in CD DRIVE - power off server. Remove your fibre connections from the host so you don't have any chance of wiping the ESX SAN luns etc etc (assuning you don't boot from SAN?)

Power on server and upgrade.....

There was a new build released a few days ago.... so make sure you download that....

Hope this helps

[ctfoster]

Might be worth just checking your harware on the support matrix.

You may need to upgrade your license file depending on your edition. Both the starter and stardard editions include new features so you would need a license file that includes those features. Otherwise your current file will be fine if you have current support agreement in place.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/822816#822816

[mike_laspina]

Yes it is that easy.

scpwin the upgrade file

cd to that dir

esxupgrade update

[chipflyer]

Thanks guys, Is the license server upgrade straight forward also? It is installed on my Virtual center server.

Jeff