a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

UPGRADE ESXi:

You can upgrade to 5.x with preserving the VMFS datastores using the CD if the ESX(i) host has not been upgraded from 3.5 previously. Also make sure you check the hardware compatibility (and BIOS version) before upgrading.


UPGRADE VM's:

To upgrade the hardware version (or compatibility mode) you need to power off the VM, then right click it in the inventory and upgrade the hardware. With vSphere 5.1 and the Web Client (only available in paid editions with vCenter Server), you can also schedule the hardware upgrade for the next reboot of the VM.

UPGRADE VMFS Datastore:

There are several hardware version 4 , 7, 8, 9 (see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003746). ESXi 5.0 is compatible to 4, 7, 8 and ESXi 5.1 is compatible to 4, 7, 8, 9. Regarding the VMFS file system ther is VMFS3 and VMFS5, where VMFS5 is only accessible by ESXi 5.x.

Even though you may not notice any performance differences in a small environment, I'd suggest you upgrade to VMFS5 anyway to be able to create VM's with up to ~2TB virtual disks with the new unified 1MB block size.

Upgrading from VMFS3 to VMFS5 is just a click on a link and can be done without downtime for the VMs, so I would upgrade preserving the VMFS datastores to avoid unnecessary work.


UPGRADE (general):

a good plan? -> To be honest: Not really in my opinion.

1) switch off all VM's and create a backup --> Always a good idea!

2) update ESXi and overwrite datastore --> I would NOT overwrite it (see previous topic)

3) copy VM's to new datastore --> no need to do this if you don't overwrite the datastores

4) update the VM's --> Yes.


LICENSING:

There is a free edition (the same binaries as the paid editions, just a different license key) which - in ESXi 5.1 - is only limited by the 32GB physical RAM per host.

If you want to manage hosts in vCenter they need to be licensed properly. The Essentials Kits come with an instance of vCenter Server and 6 CPU licenses for up to 3 hosts with 2 CPUs each (no more core limits).

One of the benefits of having a licensed edition is the ability to use commercial image based backup applications like vRanger, Veeam, ...

BACKUP:

How you backup a VM depends on it's workload. Most virtual machines can easily be backed up image based. Other's may require traditional agent based backup methods. If you look at backup applications, make sure you also look at their restore capabilities!!!

Snapshots are NO backups!! They may be used temporarily in case of e.g. critical updates to be able to revert if necessary. Never use them as backup.

André