Upgrading Virtual Center 2.5 U0 to 2.5 U4

[Phil_Ax]

Our environnement consist of 1 physical Virtual Center 2.5 U0 with 2 ESX servers 3.5 build 82663. It was configured and installed with new hardware by a consultant about 1 year ago.

Now, I want to update my Virtual Center 2.5 update 0 to Virtual Center update 4. After that I will update my ESX hosts via update manager.

My Virtual Center database is SQL Express and the license server is also installed on the same server.

I try updating the Virtual Center to update 4 but I get an error message before the upgrading process starts ''Another version of this product is already installed. Installation of this version cannot continue.''

I noticed on this forum that many people are having the same kind of problems while updating their virtual center 2.5 server. So, after a few hours of searching around I think that the best thing would be to uninstall my Virtual Center and do a fresh install after. Is this correct?

I'm kind of new to the virtual world. I'm quite confortable managing the ESX Servers with Virtual Center and creating vm,etc...but this is the first time I have to install or update Virtual Center/ESX so I'm nervous a bit. Can someone tell me if I'm on the right track if I have to install a fresh copy of Virtual Center update 4?

1- Backup my actual Virtual Center database (I made a full backup of the database called VIM_VCDB with Sql management Studio express. Is this the right database to backup? Do I have to do anything else before uninstalling)

2- Uninstall VMWare VirtualCenter server 2.5 (do I have to uninstall all the other VMWare products like VMWare infrastucture update, VMWare converter entreprise client, VMWare converter entreprise for Virtual Center?

3- Installation of VMWare Virtual Center 2.5 update 4 (will the installation see that I already have a virtual center database?)

Thanks for your help I really appreciate it

[Phil_Ax]

Any thoughts would greatly appreciated...

[azn2kew]

If you're planning to do fresh install of VC 2.5 U4, try to install it via virtual machine and so you can have a good familiar process how it works, in case you have to reinstall it via physical server. Have you try to stop the virtual center server services and backup all the databases on it and run the VC 2.5 U4 wizard and it should allow you to run upgrade process. Just make sure to use appropriate account during vCenter installation and VUM components. If you don't care about performance database and VUM baseline configurations, you can just install everything from scratch it takes about 15-20 minutes max.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant