Upgrading from ESX 4.0

[tmillcon]

Thanks in advance for any advice.  I’m the IT Manager at a school district and I am preparing to upgrade to Vmware 5.1.  I currently have three ESX 4.0 servers and one Vcenter 32bit server on a physical box.  Since I have to migrate to a 64bit platform for Vcenter, and from ESX to ESXI, I was thinking a clean install would be the best approach but I’m not sure which would be the most efficient way.  Initially I thought of doing something like this:

1. Create a VM for the new Vcenter server on one of the 4.0 hosts.
2. Install Vcenter 5.0 and migrate settings from the 4.0 Vcenter (Is this neccesary or should I just start with a fresh Vcenter VM?)
3. Remove the three hosts from the 4.0 cluster and add them to a new cluster on Vcenter 5
4. Upgrade or clean install each host to 5.0 (I can vmotion all of my VM’s to the other two boxes and still keep everything up)
5. Upgrade everything to 5.1

I’m open to any suggestions.  Also, how does the upgrade affect the data stores? Do the Volumes need to be updated to VMFS 5.

Thanks again for any help.

[a_p_]

Some questions for clarification:

• do all the VMs reside on shared storage, i.e. nothing on the host's local storage?
• did you already check the HCL (http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl) to ensure the hosts as well as the shared storage are both supported by the new version?
• do you use any vCenter Server related configuration (e.g. Virtual Distributed Switches)?
• do you use VM based backup software?

André

[tmillcon]

Thanks for the prompt reply.  Here are the ansers to your questions:

Some questions for clarification:

• do all the VMs reside on shared storage, i.e. nothing on the host's local storage? Yes all on shared storage
• did you already check the HCL (http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl) to ensure the hosts as well as the shared storage are both supported by the new version? Yes my hardware is supported
• do you use any vCenter Server related configuration (e.g. Virtual Distributed Switches)? NO
• do you use VM based backup software? NO

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

In this case, I'd probably do a clean installation of all the components. First free up one of the hosts and disconnect/remove it from the current vCenter Server. Then upgrade it's firmware (if applicable), install and configure ESXi 5.1 and then setup vCenter Server 5.1 (unless you need Update Manager, you may consider the vCenter Server Appliance).

Once done disable HA/DRS on the old vCenter Server, disconnect/remove the hosts from it and add the host to the new vCenter Server. If the hosts have similar hardware, you should be able to vMotion the VMs and this way do a rolling reinstallation of the hosts.

André

PS: Regarding VMFS. Although it is possible to upgrade VMFS3 to VMFS5 on the fly (after all hosts are running the new version), I usually tend to create new datastores and migrate the VMs rather than to upgrading VMFS.

[tmillcon]

Thanks again. This is definitley how I will proceed.  I read up on the vCenter Server Appliance and I'm starting to lean in that direction.  If I need to use update manager I can install that on a Windows based VM right?

Thanks again for your help.

[a_p_]

Yes, you can install Update Manager separately (see e.g. VMware KB: Services bundled with vCenter Server Appliance) However, patching an ESXi 5 host is very easy and basically only requires a single command from the console, so it might be not worth installing it for only 3 hosts.

André