I just did my update this morning. Went exactly as the seminar showed, and the documents list. Personally, I was shocked.
I stopped the vCenter services, than ran the upgrade, and it all Just Worked. Then I updated the vSphere client, then updated the Update Manager. All this was on the vCenter server.
Then I updated the vSphere client, and Update client, on my workstation, and it all Just Worked.
Downtime was under 30 minutes, probably under 20 ...
Had a little bit of trouble, as the update manager was giving an error that it could not download patch definitions, but that turned out to be a problem with Internet access on the vCenter server; once I resolved that, the check for new patches Just Worked.
So it looks like I am good to go. I will give it a week or so, to continue running with my ESX 4.1 U1 servers, before I start planning the final steps, about upgrading to ESXi v5.
Then I get to do the fun parts about migrating to new SAN storage, formatted as VMFS v5, etc.
Good times ahead!
I would suggest running that pre-upgrade host checker. Luckily, mine ran clean.
And keep Support's phone number handy, just in case. ![]()