Upgrading of older version of ESX

[ChrisLopes]

Hi,

I have 3 esx ( esx a, esx b, esx c) 3.01 in a cluster say Cluster 1 and 2 esx (esx d and esx e) 3.02 in another cluster, say cluster 2. The VC is 2.0.

Is it possible for me to upgrade the VC to 2.5 first and then upgrade the esx say 2 weeks later and will the Latest VC able to manage the existingesx 3.01 and 3.02 ?

If I want to perform a inplace upgrade. Am I right to say that I vmotion ESX A to ESX B and ESX C and then shutdown ESX A. Discconct ESX from SAN and then boot from CD and it will automatically upgraded to the new version? Is this the recommended and safest way of upgrading ?

If I go maintenance mode, a bit curious how can the ESX 3.5 CD can be setup to be bootable fo the upgrade?

Lastly, I have about 80 VM and how can I upgrade the VM in a fastest way instead of login into to each VM an upgrade the tools.

Thanks for your patience

[weinstein5]

UPgrading VC to 2.5 should be your first step and you will be able to manage the 3.0.x ESX Servers - here is VMware's upgrade guide - for more informaiton

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[Troy_Clavell]

Your upgrade path should be to upgrade your vCenter Server first to 2.5, my recomendation would be to go to U3, then do a rolling upgrade of all your ESX Hosts. Don't upgrade the VMware Tools until all your Clustered Host Servers are at the same build level.

When going from 3.0.x, I would tend to do a rebuild instead of an upgrade, it is much cleaner.

The .iso file you download from the VMware website is bootable, just burn the .iso to a CD.

Remember to backup your vCenter Server DB, before you begin and review the upgrade guide and you should be good.

Good Luck!

[ChrisLopes]

Hi there,

Just a quick check on the following

1. If the server is in maintenance mode, how can ESX still be upgraded?

2. After I vmotion the VM to another host, can I should down the ESX Host or should I go to Maintenance mode first, then exit maintenance mode and then shutdown the host.

[Troy_Clavell]

Lastly, I have about 80 VM and how can I upgrade the VM in a fastest way instead of login into to each VM an upgrade the tools.

This is a pretty good tool for upgrading tools, it will reboot the VM's when complete

http://www.robware.net/

Also, with 2.5/3.5 you can highlight a bunch of VM's right click in do the upgrade there are well.

[scerazy · Accepted solution]

Thanks Troy, really nice tool, it can even upgrade Linux VM, but does not reboot the such VM (and the tools do not get started, so manual intervention is required, tested on Fedora8 & Novel OES2 Suse)

Seb