Upgrading 3.0 to 3.5

[Enafets]

Hi there,

I plan to upgrade 2 stand-alone ESX host 3.0.2(52542) to 3.5. Are there things to do before upgrading ?

I allready read the PDF from RTFM Education, and if we don't use Virtualcenter, there is nothing special to do before upgrading.

I'll do it using an ISO, rebooting the server using it, and the upgrading ESX to 3.5

Then, i'll restart the VM and upgrade the tools

Do you have any recommandation ?

Thanks

[tjuksa]

Hello Enafets

There are some issues if your configured the hosts for SAN connectivity. Check the SAN Conn. Guide before you start, our EMC SAN (the old DMX800) was no longer supported in 3.5 so we got an issue there.

Also check your Firmware for Nics and HBA's.

If you're going to upgrade it should be fairly straight forward, it's better (in my oppinion to do a clean sweep, but then it comes to where you've got your datastores) If you clean your system and have local datastores you HAVE TO be 100% on so you don't ¤%# up your vm's

Have you considered 3i or are you going to do the 3.5 with the s.c.? I would recomend the embedded or 3i. installer.

Best of luck

[Texiwill]

Hello,

The things I do are:

Move all VMs to 2nd server

Upgrade all Firmware on the Server (I had a pNIC issue which kept ESX v3.5 from running... it was firmware)

Ensure you have the proper BIOS settings... Good time to double check...

Now you have a decision to make.... If you are unhappy with your current disk layout (not enough /var/log for example, or you do not have separate /, /home, /var, /var/log partitions or your swap partition is too small) now is a good time to fix that by doing an installation instead of an upgrade.

Repeat for the second server.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Enafets]

Thanks for your advices

My 2 hosts are hosting local VMs, no SAN with those one. And of-course, i don't have enough space disk to make a full copy of the ESX1 to ESX2 and vice-versa ...

One of the ESX is backuped by vRanger, but not the 2nd one.

My physical servers are Dell PE 2950

Edit : i'm dowloading Dell DVD ISO "firmware upade" and i found enough disk space to backup my 2 ESX's VM