Disconnect HBAs before Upgrade?

[NathanEly]

I am getting ready to upgrade our 3.0.1 farm to 3.0.2.

I have all the needed components, have all my steps documented, etc.

What I would like to know is:

Is it recommended to disconnect the HBAs from the switches before performing the upgrade? Are there any remote datastore components that need to be 'touched' by the upgrade, other than locally-based config files? All VMs will be migrated to other hosts before the upgrade, obviously. Virtual Center will be running at 2.0.2 as well...

Also, is it recommended to use the CD vs 'esxupdate' from the extracted tarball? I'm comfortable with the cmd-line having patched many hosts manually, installing HP Insight Agents, etc.

I know there are probably threads that touch on a few of these points, but any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your input.

-Nate

[oreeh · Accepted solution]

If you don't need the HBAs for booting - disconnect them. This way you / the install can't accidentally overwrite your LUNs.

I prefer to reinstall (if I have the choice).

But this is just a personal preference.

[Rob_Bohmann1]

yes, always better to be safe than sorry...

[bggb29]

i always disconnect them. I know in 3.0 it is up to you. In 1.5 and 2.x it was a prerquisite action

[psharpley]

I've upgraded using the CD without disconnecting the SAN via iLO without issue (on an HP blade). This was from a 3.0.1 clean build, but I would certainly re-install from scratch without the SAN connected if I wasn't satisfied with the original config or had upgraded an upgrade. An upgrade saves configuration work but in either case the VMtools upgrade is a pain.

[lhedrick]

I upgraded Virtual Center a couple days before upgrading the hosts. I upgraded 20+ hosts from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 remotely using esxupdate and Altiris to deploy the files and scripts. I did not have any problems, just enter maintenance mode, run the upgrade, reboot, take a look at the log to see if it had any problems, then exit maintenance mode... I was 40+ miles away so I could not unplug anything and everything upgraded fine. Just make sure you have access to the ILO/RSA/DRAC before you begin just in case...;-)

[NathanEly]

If I perform a fresh installation, will I have to manually present the LUNS again, or will just an HBA scan do the trick? I hard-zoned the switchports.

-N

[Texiwill]

Hello,

During an Upgrade you may not need to disconnect/unpresent the LUNs from your SAN, it depends on how you are doing the upgrade really.

However, for install you should ALWAYS disconnect/unpresent the LUNs else there is a good chance you will install onto a LUN and overwrite whatever is there. This step is precautionary and should always be done.

For upgrades off the CDROM is is also suggested to do this. Granted you may not have issues but one easy to do little misstep and you have deleted everything on a VMFS.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky, author of the forthcoming 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', publishing January 2008, (c) 2008 Pearson Education.