Advice on upgrading to VCenter 4.1

[tmcb]

Hi everyone.

Our VMware environment is still sitting at 3.5.

We are planning to migrate to 4.1 and am trying to get thoughts together on what to do with VCenter.

We currently have a physical Win 2003 server running VCenter connected to a SQL 2000 server ( for VC and UM databases)

We would like to end up with :

- VC running as a virtual server

- win 2008 R2 64 bit

- VCenter 4.1

- databases on SQL 2005 64 bit

I'm just not sure the best way to do this.

I have created a Win 2008 VM. On this I will install VCenter 4.1

But should I created a new SQL database and recreate the datacentre and cluster and then import the hosts and VMs from our origianl VC server.

Or should I try and export / import the SQL 2000 DB to  SQL 2005.

I dont mind creating a blank UM database as we havent use this yet.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[PduPreez · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Forums

Depending on the complexity of the configuration and size of the environment.

If there is not allot of permissions or resource pools configured, I would setup a new vCenter

recreate the Datacenter and Clusters and import the hosts (VMs will follow)

After hosts are in new vCenter, upgrade/reinstall them to ESXi4.1

If you really want to upgrade, here is the upgrade doc link http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_upgrade_guide.pdf

regards

Please award points if you find this helpful/correct

[khughes]

When I upgrade the vCenter server to a new version, I build out a new database for it so it is nice and clean. Then again we don't have a ton of configuration so it isn't that big of a deal to me to have to go back in and recreate the cluster / HA / DRS settings.  If you have a larger environment where that is a lot of work migrating and upgrading your database isn't a bad idea.

This KB may help - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=585044...

[tmcb]

Thnaks so much for the replies - you have really helped - I will do as you suggest and start with a new clean installationa and migrate the hosts into this new server,

Much appreciated