Suggestions on testing 3.5 with my current lab environment

[thecoffeeguy]

I have a lab environment, running ESX 3.0.2 with 3 VM's in it at this time.

I am downloading ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 and would like to stand these up in the lab so I can test and was hoping for a couple of suggestions on how to go about this so I can get started ASAP with 3.5.

1.) Should I do a upgrade of the ESX 3.0.2 server to 3.5? Or should I do a clean install

if I do a clean install, what is the best way to backup those VM's currently in the ESX 3.0.2 server? Can I use converter, say to push it to another machine that is running Workstation? Then when 3.5 is up, run converter again to push it to th ESX?

2.) I wanted to test the new VC as well as update manager, but I don't have another physical server at this time to install VC on. I thought about creating a new VM and installing VC on that. Any caveats to that? Right now, I have just one ESX server in my lab, but im hoping to add to that here shortly.

Appreciate it.

TCG

[starz]

1. When doing a new install you have the option to keep the VMFS-partition, if you do that then all your VMs will still be there after the installation completes. If you don't trust this option you can do what you described.

2. VC can be placed into a VM, no problem when using it for a test environment.

[ewannema]

Silly answer, but I would do in the test lab what you plan on doing in production.

I don't know how many hosts you have, but if you have 2 you could set up a VC 2.5 VM and reinstall the hosts one at a time. With VMotion and add/removing hosts from a cluster you should be good to go.

Keep in mind that if you only have one host and you do the reinstall while keeping your VMFS volumes you will have to re-register the VMs.

[starz]

ewannema, you're right about the need to re-register the VMs, I forgot about that. Thanks for correcting me