Potential VC DB corruption if your ESX versions are newer than VC version?

[vmrulz]

I was told by a vmware support engineer that if you bring up 3.5.x hosts with a newer update version than your VC 2.5 update version that you could get corruption in your VC database do to incompatible schema that the old VC DB has. For example we're on VC 2.5 update 1 and we've recently starting bringin ESX 3.5 update 3 hosts online. To me this is very troublesome considering that VC doesn't warn you of any such incompatiblity when adding these hosts and from what I've gleaned from the ESX update 3 release notes they don't point out the issue.

Any thoughts or experience on this topic?

Mother's don't let your children do production support for a living!

[Jasemccarty]

Well the rule of thumb with VI3, is that you upgrade VC to a build that supports the latest ESX build you wish to install.

What I mean is... VC 2.5 Update 3 can support all the ESX 3.5 builds (through Update 3).

But... VC 2.5 Update 1 doesn't support ESX 3.5 Update 3.

Always, always, always update VC first, then your hosts.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[Mark_Bradley]

Jase is completely right... always VC first... then either add or upgrade the hosts...

I have seen it when I applied Update 2 through Update Manager to a host then rebooted VC that the VC Service will fail to start, as it was still Update 1... due to the database not being set up for the updated host.

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Check out my blog at http://www.ridethevirt.blogspot.com

[vmrulz]

Thanks I can understand it as a best practice however if there is potential for DB corruption or other bad ju ju, VC shouldn't even let you add the host to VC or at least have bold warning in the release notes. The update3 hosts I have added are having no issues at all from what I can see.. The HA/DRS clusters are fine.

For us VC is always big deal to upgrade in terms of red tape and outage BS. I'm working on removing update3 hosts until we can find a window to upgrade VC. Our virtual sprawl is now over 50esx hosts and 1000 guests.. it is difficult to maintain with minimum staff to say the least.

Mother's don't let your children do production support for a living!

[Jasemccarty]

To be honest with you... I haven't had an issue with whacking my vC database. Other than losing performance stats. But we have other products doing that.

HA isn't affected by a vC upgrade (during the upgrade), because vC isn't necessary for HA.

DRS and vMotion of course will be offline during an upgrade.

And I typically upgrade vC during the day. Provided I'm not installing a release that came out the same day.

I typically wait a couple weeks before even thinking about upgrading.

I watch the boards... See what some others experiences are, you know, the ones that want to be cutting edge, and see what transpires.

Then when I'm comfortable with all aspects of the upgrade, I submit a change request to change control, and wait for the approved window.

That's it.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[vmrulz]

We upgraded VC with no problems.. on to the next version du joir

Mother's don't let your children do production support for a living!

[IB_IT]

Anyone know of a kb article that specifically points to this DB corruption?