VMware Cloud Community
jlee2
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The (un)official 3.0.1/2.0.1 Upgrade Report Thread

I thought I'd start a thread for people to report how their upgrade to ESX 3.0.1 and VC 2.0.1 went. I'm mostly looking for persons upgrading from 3.0.0/2.0.0 but ESX 2.x upgraders feel free to post also. Be sure to include details like your SAN or RAID controller, are you using vCPU or Vmotion, any additional steps you had to take, etc, etc. I'm looking to move my 3.0.0 box to 3.0.1 on Thurs. evening so I'll be sure to post back my results. Any other early adopters?

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pdrace
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

The file I downloaded, VMware-vpx-2.0.1-32042.zip does.

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Freitag
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I did my first upgrade from 3.0.0 from CD to 3.0.1 with SAN attached, and guess what, got the GRUB screen.

The server where installed month ago with 3.0.0 and also SAN attached and without Problems.

So I just disconnected the FC kables and started the update again, Also the second upgrade with detached SAN ended in GRUB.

Following workaround worked for me http://www.esxguide.com/ESX3/Grub.htm

Actually it is enough to detach the SAN, edit the /grub/device.map and make sure it points to the corect drive

(hd0) /dev/sda

for the most default installations.

On the Same HW server installed the same way and connected to the same SAN nothing helped, I did the upgrade after the issues on the first server without SAN attached, but got The GRUB anyway. I could not manage to get rid of it with any workaround.

In ended up in an New Installtion of 3.0.1 from the scratch on this host.

I hope upgrade to 3.0.2 will be less painfull.

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pdrace
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I got the GRUB error with out any SAN attached. TS basically said try it again if it still doesn't work do a fresh install, which I did and it worked. Seems like they should have a better response then that though.

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kimono
Expert
Expert

I wish they'd fix that damned GRUB thing, it's a royal pain isn't it?

/kimono/
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pdrace
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yes it is! It wasted a lot of my day yesterday.

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andrew_hald
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I'm telling you guys, esxupdate is much less painful. Smiley Happy No need to hide the SAN LUNs, no CDs involved, it actually works on a routine basis. What's not to love?! Smiley Happy

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c_g-hills
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

esxupdate broke my servers. The cd-based upgrade worked fine.

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pdrace
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Ok, server upgrade number 2 from 3.0 to 3.01. I used the tarball and esxupdate. Everything seemed to go fine but now my virtual machine switches are broken.

These virtual switches are linked to trunk ports on the switch using LACP and the virtual switch is set to use IP hash which worked before.

Arrghhh!

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charney
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

ok, all of my 3.0 to 3.01 upgrades with the tarball went fine.

However after upgrading VC to 2.0.1 most of my ESX boxes upgraded fine. I have two that the client failed to upgrade. Still poking around to figure out why.

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andrew_hald
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

What broke? Did you use the proper tarball? Smiley Sad Sorry to hear of your difficulty.

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dgrace
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Upgraded from VC 1.3.1 to 2.0.1 on a Win2k3(SP1) server yesterday. Ran into a few headaches but it is running now.

1) Near the end of the original wizard where you should be given the option to start the database upgrade wizard, I instead got a message telling me the upgrade had been interrupted. I ran it again to make sure I didn't interrupt but got the same message. Had to reboot and run the initial install wizard again- worked ok that time.

2) In LMTools, clicking on System Settings caused the app to crash. As posted at

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=468100񲒄

the issue is with Win2k3's Data Execution Prevention (DEP). I rebooted the server, got a DEP popup window with a checkbox. I checked it and LMTools starting working right.

3) Licensing- which was my main worry with doing the upgrade in the first place. My license file for the ESX servers included the lines:

INCREMENT PROD_ESX_FULL VMWARELM 2005.05 permanent uncounted \

VENDOR_STRING=licenseType=Host;capacityType=cpuPackage;gp=14;exclude=BACKUP;count=2

I don't remember where those came from. I grabbed the pertinent sections from my registration emails and replaced those sections in my license files with sections starting with:

INCREMENT PROD_ESX_FULL VMWARELM 2005.05 permanent 10 \

VENDOR_STRING=licenseType=Server;capacityType=cpuPackage;gp=14;exclude=BACKUP

Surprisingly this did not fix it. My original .lic file was in d:\download\vmware.lic After clicking "Reread License File" in LMTools a few times, I noticed it was reading from

c:\Program Files\VMWare\VMWare License Server\vmware.lic

Ahhhh, the install wizard reads from your license file and puts that information in it's own file in the License Server directory. Makes sense once you know it, but I hadn't seen mention of that in the docs. Once i made the above change in the License Server directory and reread the file, I was able to start connecting my ESX hosts (2.5.3).

4) Once my ESX servers were connected, I had a lot of alarms activated. All of my alarms had been set to 7% for warning and 9% for critical. I'm sure those weren't the settings before because I would have been getting alarms all the time before the upgrade. I adjusted the settings to reasonable numbers and the alarms cleared out quickly.

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baughnb
Contributor
Contributor

I upgraded from 1.3 to 2.01 and the db upgrade failed initially. I reran it, and unchecked 'preserve events and tasks' and it upgraded fine.

I upgraded 5 DL580 G3's from 2.5.3 to 3.01 successfully using the CD (and dmotion to upgrade/move the VMs to vmfs3). I disconnected my SAN storage before upgrading the ESX hosts in hopes to avoid the GRUB error others have had, and did not have any problems. The only oddity in the upgrade was that on 2 of the hosts, just after the step where it says its copying the rpms to the server it suddenly existed the installer and came back with 'it is now safe to reboot your computer'. I retried the upgrade, and on both hosts, the 3rd time worked successfully! Very odd, and I haven't been able to correlate anything back to the install logs. Nevertheless, we're all upgraded now.

And here is to hoping they add the ability to do a dmotion between 2 3.01 hosts!

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twhite2
Contributor
Contributor

U R Kewl, That worked. Thanks!

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debaillon
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the 3 easy steps Ben, I followed your advice to go from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 and so-far-so-good. 6 more to go!

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