Does VC still see and Vmotion available when you power on the machine with the new version?
Are you still able to migrate the guests to the newer ESX host to begin a second update?
Any issues if I just complete re-install of the new version and add it to the VC server?
I'm not positive if you need the latest VirtualCenter update to run a newer version of 3.5, but I could be wrong. There are a lot of fixes in 2.5U3 from what I heard. There have been some cases with 2.5U3 to cause some HA issues, but I haven't seen any of that personally.
Going from the information from you should be good to go without updating your VC unless you feel the changes in U3 are worth updating.
Kyle
When I did our upgrade, I put the host into maintence mode, moved all the VM's off the host. Removed it from the cluster, then did a fresh install of ESX. Then once you have it back up and configured you can add it back into the cluster again with no biggie. You can then migrate VMs back onto the newly built host and rinse wash and repeat. One thing you want to be aware of is I would wait until all of your hosts are done with the upgrade before updating your vmtools on the VMs. They'll still run fine with the old tools but until all the hosts are done with the upgrade I would leave them alone.
Kyle
Would you recommend upgrading VC first then to the hosts individually?
I'm not positive if you need the latest VirtualCenter update to run a newer version of 3.5, but I could be wrong. There are a lot of fixes in 2.5U3 from what I heard. There have been some cases with 2.5U3 to cause some HA issues, but I haven't seen any of that personally.
Going from the information from you should be good to go without updating your VC unless you feel the changes in U3 are worth updating.
Kyle
Thanks, thats the confiednce boost I needed to move forward.
Good luck on your upgrade, should be pretty painless, I went from 3.0.2U2 to 3.5U2 without much headaches at all so I would think 3.5 to 3.5U2 should be a breeze.
Kyle