ESX 3.0.1 upgrade to esx 3.5 update 2

[navaneedak]

At present my setup is working with 3 Nos esx 3.0.1 servers with VC 2.0. I am planning to upgrade this to 3.5 update 2 with VC 2.5.

Can i install 3 New servers fresh install with esx 3.5 U2 and install parallel with esx 3.0.1.

Add the newly installed esx 3.5 servers to the existing 3.0.1 cluster and migrate the virtual machines from 3.0.1 to 3.5 using the Vmotion and after the vmotion to remove all the 3.0.1 from the cluster and use only yhe new esx 3.5.....with VC 2.5 ... can i do this migration???? is it supported ????

[lamw]

If you don't want to upgrade, then yes you can just install fresh copy from the ESX 3.5 Update 2 .ISO, it'll probably fly in terms of doign the upgrade but depending if you have scripts to rebuild your environment such as vSwitches/portgroups/resource pools/etc. You'll be able to VMotion between 3.0 and 3.5 U2 but you may be required to update 3.0.1 to a more current patchset or set of patches and long as the hardware/cpu is compabitable you should be fine. Remember to upgrade your VC first as with any ESX upgrades, your Virtual Center needs to be updated first before moving to your ESX upgrade, put the systems in maintenance mode and then run the upgrade. Once your entire environemnt is upgraded, I suggest creating EVC enabled cluster to gurantee VMotion compability between your current hosts and all furture hosts with different generation of the same CPU vendor ( either AMD or INTEL), this will require the systems to have AMD-V or INTEL-VT enabled at the BIOS.

[navaneedak]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I have done the fresh instaltion of esx 3.5 U2 and migrated the VM from esx 3.01 to esx 3.5 . VC updated to vc 2.5.

EVC not getting enabled in the cluster and it shows as the cpu is not supported.

I dont have the ntp time server in my setup. how to set the date and time for my esx servers.

I have tried setting the date by using Date command but it get resets to another date..

[lamw · Accepted solution]

Here's a KB article that shows you how to enable NTP, you can either use authorized timeservers that's being managed by someone else OR your own time servers. If you're lookign to auth your Service Console to AD, make sure your time sync between your DC and ESX Server is working else you'll see login issues as the time drift is too far apart from each other, it's very sensitive and having your ESX Host up to date allows you to have your VM with VMware Tools installed to sync to the host.