What are the ways to move to vCenter 5.1 from 5.0 ?

[asynic]

I have vCenter 5.0 with mixed hosts, most of them are ESX 4.0, couple of them are ESXi 5.0. I would like upgrade vCenter to 5.1.

What is the best and least disruptive way to do so? I'm considering an in-place upgrade vs. building a new vcenter 5.1 and then migrating all the hosts into

that vCenter. What is the best and least disruptive way to do so? Are they both considered valid ways to achieve the same goal?

Thank you,

[schepp]

Hi,

here is a KB article about the Upgrade from vCenter 5.0 to 5.1.

and here is the vSphere 5.1 upgrade guide: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-51-upgrade...

I would do it ( and did ) as an in-place upgrade. Your ESX 4.0 hosts can also be managed by vCenter 5.1, no need to worry about that.

Building a second vCenter and disconnecting the hosts from the old one and connecting them to the new one is way more disruptive and you will have to configure everything again, like your Clusters.

Regards

[asynic]

Hi shepp,

Thanks for your quick response...Could you be more specific...

An in-place upgrade looks kind of complicated to me...how long it takes(I'm starting to read the articles...) assuming VMs are not down?

Then SSO... What actually could go wrong?...working on the production system...

With the migration to new vCenter VMs need to be down or not? All the network setting are staying with the esx host, right?

And the cluster setting need to be recreated...what settings exactly ...I just have new cluster...

And, would you upgrade the esx 4.0 before or after having vcenter 5.1?

I know that a lot of questions...appreciate any suggestions...

Thanks,

[karthickvm]

Hello,

In-place upgrade is simple and straight forward.

Have a look at this , http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=202119...

1. Download vCenter 5.1 bundles to your vCenter machine and click cimple install

2. This would install SSO Automatically (Exception : if external SSO DB)

3. Then It will upgrade your vCenter to 5.1.

All the settings are 100% preserved and you do not need to recreate cluster or networking components.

[asynic]

Thanks Kumar,

What about this statement from this article:

If the vCenter Server upgrade fails, no automatic rollback occurs to the previous vCenter Server version.

Just being really carefull working on live-production system and afraid loosing vCenter...

[karthickvm]

Hello,

Take a backup of DB, simply take a snapshot before the upgrade, we all hope the upgrade goes smooth.

Incase any issues you can revert the snapshot . 

[asynic]

Katrhnic,

Great idea with the snaphost, completely forgot about that..

Also I discovered that I'm still using SQL 2005...not sure if it express or full version, though.

Do you think I should update to SQL 2008? If so that needs to be done before the vCenter upgrade?

Thanks,

[karthickvm]

Hello,

2005 Express is not supported iwht 5.x http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200670..., so have your DB migrated to 2008, have a look at the article.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102860...

- I have followed this and found it worked

- Take a complete backup of the DB (BAK format)

- Install sql 2008 express

- Restore the backup

- Create a system DSN point to the DB

- After installation of SSO, point the DSN to install vCenter.(After SSO installation, the vCenter installation will start).

[asynic]

Thanks for all the advice...

I'm trying to understand that in-place upgrade is the way to go, but...

In my case...having 7 hosts(I do have some flexibity there) with about 40 machines on vCenter 5.0 with sql 2005, I really think that migrating to new vCenter 5.1 with SQL 2008 would be a easier way to go...

What vCenter, cluster settings I would have to reconfigure in the new vCenter?

Thanks,

[gmitch64 · Accepted solution]

Another option you have, and the way I just did it, is to keep running your vCenter 5.0. Run the install for SSO from the 5.1 ISO and get that working first. It doesn't interact with 5.0, so you shouldn't mess anything up. Once you have that working, you can install the WebClient service too, and also get that running - it interacts with SSO, so you can do some testing  and make sure it's all happy. Once all that's done, pick your time, and then do the rest of the vCenter 5.1 upgrade.

I guess ours was a reasonably simple setup - we run all the vCenter services on the same Windows server, and we were already running SQL 2008, so there wasn't too much messing around to do - this was with 13 ESXi5.0 and 9 ESXi4.1 hosts, and around 180 guests.

The SSO/Web Client Service took me a couple of hours to do back in February, and the final part of the vCenter upgrade took a couple of hours of down time to do last week. Of course, you can add on another 2+ hours for installing syslog, dumper, autodeploy, vShield and other pieces that you have.

My biggest fear was all the horror stories I had read about the SSO install, which is why I wanted to get it done and out of the way first.

Of course, I am still building and testing my ESXi5.1 ISO install image etc.

G

[asynic]

G,

I like  your approach, I think it's least evasive, safe...Although I still need to update SQL...

I will probably mix and match few things from all approaches...I will be doing this in about week or two...So I'll have my own 5 cents on the issue

We upgrading all the HP blades and storage for now, so I prefer to wait..

Thanks everybody for all good thoughts and ideas,

Really appreciate...

A

[cajunitalian]

Some points:

• Make sure you have your input order correct:
  • vcenter first
  • ESXi
  • View (VDI if you have this)
• *CHECK your cluster settings if you are set up in a cluster.  I often find one or two settings are not enabled like HA and you'll have to check it off.
• Do a test run on evacuation: This will only be pertinent if you have multiple ESXi hosts.  Test Maintenance mode on one to see if the VMs evacuate correctly so when you do your upgrades there won't be issues, or you won't get confused. 
• MAKE SURE your VM's aren't tied to a host: Example, we have several servers that are limited to hosts 1 and 2 so if I put both of those in maintenance mode, they won't migrate.

The update is very simple, just keep in mind that vcenter has a ton of changes when it comes to administration for 5.1.  Just make sure you get the newest update manager rolling and you'll be fine post-update!

[asynic]

Thanks man.

Very valued points...The only thing I would add is that I think I want to reload the hosts to 5.1 so later I can have real VMFS-5 vs upgraded VMFS-5 for datastores...

I'm reading it's almost the same but not quite, whe it comes to the block sizes....

Thanks, 

[cajunitalian]

True - the difference though are more then that. Hit up the KB to see, but yes you can reload. Rebuilding and ESXi Host is snap anyway. The only things I have to remember are static IPs and to make sure my DNS setting on AD are correct.

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Systems Administrator/Director | Green Clinic Surgical Hospital

Privacy and Information Security Officer

Green Clinic Health System | 318.202.9251

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[asynic]

Thank you again cajunitalian,

All good points, I do understand the order is very important....

Thanks,

[asynic]

Just an update...

I finally installed new vcenter 5.1 on the new server. I did not find one document that actually would tell all. I had to do it about 4-5 times before I think I have a good working vcenter(still group membership is not working corectly) Few things that I learned...

Doing simple install is not working, need to install modules one by one...SSO, Inventory Service, Vcenter

Before you install SSO you need to modify and run only 2(two) sripts from instalation CD(tablespace and user rights)...don't run the 3rd one, it will be done by SSO install,

Before instaling vCenter, you either need to created database for it manually(then you need to create some user with right to that database) or find some scripts on the web, then create ODBC to that database...really important to do this right....I screw up that part few times,

Finally it's good if you have the latest iso , I think currently stable version is 5.1.0b, built 977673...I did not have that so I did run the upgrade after...really cool, no problems, running again SSO, Inventory and Vcenter, no issues there over what I had

In general running snapshot, if you can, after each phase is good idea, because if something goes wrong you can go back with clean state, for example if something goes wrong with SSO, then database is already there, users...need to remove them...it's just not clean the next time arround.VMware tells you just uninstall everything and then install it again...uninstallation works but then when you install it again it gives you errors..

Thanks again for any suggestions...