Upgrading ESX3.5

[MikeWazowski]

I am planning to upgrade production environment from 3.5 U2 to U4. Setting ESX to maintenance mode is all good but after the upgrade of the ESX VMware tools upgrades have to be done on all VMs which require reboot of those VMs. in this case my entire production.

forgive me but what is the point of maintenance mode if you still require reboot of your entire production environment?

[RParker]

forgive me but what is the point of maintenance mode if you still require reboot of your entire production environment?

MM is for the ESX host to stop VMkernel from it's hypervisor to host VM's. so in order to take the vmkernel offline, they introduced a 'maintenance mode' to ensure services are stopped and the machine put into a mode that the drivers, programs and services can be replaced. You COULD update these files in place, but to make sure they get properly installed requires a reboot.

So while MM is in operation your VM's must first be powered off, otherwise MM will not initiate. So that's why you want to use VMotion on central SAN storage so your production VM's are NOT affected. That's what you should be using to avoid interrupting your critical servers.

[MikeWazowski]

Thank you for the response but I am not sure if it answers my question.

I would set the ESX to maintenance mode. Migrate all VMs to another host. All VMs are up and running at this point. Upgrade ESX to the latest v. and than migrate all VMs back. at that point all VMs will require vmtoools to be upgraded which require the reboot.

it is only saves the time for me to do the upgrade of ESX which is 15 minutes or even less..... If VMware would have the functionality not to require the reboot of VMs this would do the network upkeep time 99% but I do not see it at this point

[Troy_Clavell]

think of the VMware Tools as a piece of software that is installed on your Servers. Any changes you make to a production server require proper change controls. The upgrade of the VMware guest tools should be handled no different.

Yes, it's a pain, but so is "Patch Tuesday". It's not critical that the VMware Tools get updated immediately, but they should get updated. Work with your application and/or server owners on their downtime windows and update accordingly.

You can automate the tools update, so it's just a matter of when.....

[damiankarlson]

Mike, the upgrade to 3.5U4 may only take 15 minutes, but you'll probably also want to run Update Manager and remediate the newly upgrade U4 boxes because patches have released since U4 came out. That takes longer, plus the additional reboots.

Also, I don't believe the VMtools upgrade is required as soon as they VMs are migrated back to your U4 host, but you should catch that during regularly scheduled maintenance windows such as guest patch remediation or normal reboot windows.

Does that help?

[MikeWazowski]

I have confirmed in my testing environment that going from U2 to U4 does require the vmtools to be updated. reboot also required.

Will have to schedule the reboot per server basis. thank you all for your answers

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

I have confirmed in my testing environment that going from U2 to U4 does require the vmtools to be updated. reboot also required.

In the release notes for U4 it states that the VMware Tools will require an upgrade

Will have to schedule the reboot per server basis. thank you all for your answers

Check out RVTools it will help you in the automating your guest tools.

[damiankarlson]

Troy -- I read that in the release notes too. This may be kind of a stupid question, but does it mean that VM's with downrevved VMtools can't be on a host running U4?