vmdk compatability / export compatability

[SyverDude]

Hello,

I need to upgrade my boot / root disk in my sles8 environment to the latest sp4 release and the simplest way for me to do this seems to be to create an image and then replace the root/boot disk.

We have placed all the applications on disks that are seperate from the application in order to simplify this type of thing.

I would like to replace my boot disks acrosse the enterprice (About 25 SLES8 Guests) running on both ESX 3 and ESX 2.

my image is updated with the new vmware tools for esx 3 and has been patched with the latest sp3 code. I understand the various config changes that need to take place in order to slip this into place but I am not sure about the best way to take this vi3 disk and put it into place on systems that are running esx 2.1.0, 2.5.1 blah blah ...

How would you approach it? use the export on esx3 and than import on it on esx 2? is it compatable going back to esx 2 from esx3?

Any thoughts on this would be helpful.

Regards,

Jon

[Texiwill]

Hello,

THis is not quite how I would approach this. Just replacing the boot and / disk would not necessarily capture everything. Quite a lot is stored for individual applications in these locations. If you want to go ahead with your plan I would test it first.

I would perform the individual upgrades using YAST. Yes it may take longer but you are guarrantteed that no applications will break.

VMware converter can be used to convert from ESX v3 to Workstation. Then you can go from Workstation to ESX v2. Converter does not understand ESX v2.

Best regards,

Edward

[SyverDude]

I know the applications very well, as I said, the applications are stored on seperate disks. The only thing that has to be done locally is changing the host, updating samba configs, and then rejoining the domain. If done by a script, it is quite simple. I know the environment very well.

One of the reasons I want to do it this way is that different systems have differeing amounts of free space and I am not going to run into any issues there. It is really a lot longer process to do it this way. what about the export and import.

\- Jon