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Replying to:
the_xploit
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Contributor

hi,

Thanks alot for your explanations André! I think i almost got it...

UPGRADE ESXi:

..so i can easily upgrade my ESXi with the installation CD... good! I'm happy with that!

I read that a VM with virtual hardware 4 can run on ESXi 5... So i can switch off my VM's, upgrade my ESXi with the CD (preserving the datastore) and switch my VM's back on... -> i can seperatly upgrade my ESXi without any dependencies.. right?

UPGRADE VM's: (after upgrading my ESXi)

To upgrade a VM i need to upgrade VMwareTools and the virtual hardware.. I know how to upgrade VMwareTools but how can i upgrade the virtual hardware? with the CD!? (-> i just have vSphere Client)

UPGRADE VMFS Datastore:

Are there any compatibility issues?

Can i move a VM v.4.0 to a datatstore that was created with ESXi 5.0? (If I overwrite my old datastore and want to move a backup-ed VM v4 to the new datastore)

Is a VM v7/8 (virtual Hardware goes from v4 to v7 or v8 right?) compatible with VMFS 4? (if i'm preserving my datastore (v4) and want to upgrade the VM's virtual hardware to v7/8)

Is it recommended to upgrade the datastore? (-> datatstore: preserving or overwrite?)

UPGRADE (general):

In which order should i upgrade? (ESXi, VM, VMFS datastore...)

my new update plan:

1) switch off all VM's and create a backup

2) update ESXi and overwrite datastore

3) copy VM's to new datastore

4) update the VM's

a good plan?

LICENSING:

I'm really confused with the whole licensing stuff...

At the moment we dont need to pay for VMware licenses (because we only have 2 CPU's with 4 cores each and 32GB RAM....at least i think thats the reason). When i get this right we have just the "hypervisor".. in other words we only have ESXi (v.4).

My question:

Is the ESXi 5.0 also available for free?

When _what_ changes i need to buy licenses? If RAM exeeds 32GB? (I knwo that i get some extra stuff like "vCenter" with the "vSphere Essentials Kit" but are there any other reasons why i should license my ESXi?)

one more thing: Is the free ESXi different from the other ESXi versions? There is a rumor that the free ESXi is not compatible with the vCenter... is that right? So if i buy just the vCenter later i cannot use my existing ESXi installation? (or does this compatibility just depend on the licence key? which can be changed after the installation?)

BACKUP:

How should i backup my machines? What is best practice here? (just want to know if i should look for a script based solution or just simple snapshots...)

Any help or hint is greatly appreciated!!

best regards

If you like.....copy this to your answer and it gets easier for all of us:

UPGRADE ESXi:
UPGRADE VM's:

UPGRADE VMFS Datastore:

UPGRADE (general):
LICENSING:

BACKUP:

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