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MorganC
Contributor
Contributor

Add New Server to ESX Cluster beforeor after 3.5 Upgrade

We've got a two PE 2950 ESX Cluster running ESX3 and need to upgrade to 3.5 and add a newer PE2950 to the cluster. Do you think we should:

1. Do the upgrade first and then add the third server

2. Buld the third server with 3.5, upgrade the others

3. Something else?

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

Adding the 3rd server is independent of the cluster hosts upgrade. Either case, you'll want to keep the cluster consistent. The only reason you'll want to bring the new ESX Server into the cluster is if you're resource constraint and having that 3rd host will help. If not, then you can upgrade your cluster, build out your 3rd host and upgrade it and then bring it into the cluster so that it'll be the same build level as the rest of the ESX Servers. You could easily build the new ESX Server to the same bulid as the cluster, then upgrade the cluster (one host at a time). Depends if you're doing this all in one shot or adding it to the cluster and then giving it some time.

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

First thing I would do, if you haven't done this yet, is install/upgrade to VC 2.5. You have to have VC 2.5 to manage 3.5 Hosts, then ensure your CPU's are all compatible so that they will play together well in the same cluster.

If all is compatible then I would do a clean install of the new 3.5 host, add it into the cluster, migrate 3.0.x guests from your 3.0.x hosts onto the 3.5 host, rebuild 2nd server... do the same for 3rd. Finally upgrade VMware Tools on guests.

MorganC
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks! We already have VC 2.5, so we can do the new one as 3.5 and add it to the cluster. We can then mgrate the other 3 servers to 3.5.

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