Upgrading from esx 4.0 to esxi 5.0

[nikheelkumar16]

Hii All,

We have some Esx 4.0's, some esx 4.1's and 1 esx 5.0, we planning for a same upgradtion  to all the vmware servers to esxi 5.0

hence requesting you to please share a few documents and request you all to suggest a few best practices to initiate this process

Important thing is our Exchange and Domain Conroller  and DNS Servers are also a Virtual Machines and our clients work 24 x 7.

[Troy_Clavell]

Remember to support ESXi 5.x Hosts, you'll first need to upgrade vCenter.  As for the guests, if you have DRS/vMotion you can migrate guests around, while you are upgrading, with no impact to your guests.

[nikheelkumar16]

Hii Troy,

I would be following this action plan

1) Upgrade vCenter 5.0
2) Migrate all vm's 4.0 to another esx servers
2) Fresh Installation of esx servers to esxi5.0
3) migrate vm's to esxi servers which has been upgraded newly

Could you or any one suggest me on this and if possible some links for the same.

[Troy_Clavell]

That is a good plan.  You may also want to follow the upgrade and installation guides

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-501-upgrad...

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-501-instal...

[nikheelkumar16]

Troy,

Could you also please let me know how do i take a backup of my networking elements, Alerts which i have configured, smt settings and Storages Structures....

Do i need to setup the entire structure once again  after each and every server has been configured.

[Troy_Clavell]

the only thing you'll need to re-due is networking.  Storage that was presented to the hosts will still be there after the upgrade.  Alarms in vCenter will still be there, since you are only upgrading (retaining current DB)

[nikheelkumar16]

Troy,

But i belive transiitation from ESX 4.0 to ESXi is done like installing ESXi Freshly again on the hardware

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

same goes for a rebuild.  If you are using fiber channel storage, the WWNs don't change.  Just remember to unplug the cables prior to the rebuild, then plug them back in when complete.

[vGuy]

In addition to Troy's recommendation, you may also want to take the output of: esxcfg-vswif -l (for the management network), esxcfg-vmknic -l (for the list of vmkernel interfaces with their IPs), esxcfg-vswitch -l (for the list of available vSwitches)

few files that could also be useful are: the /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, /etc/shadow, /etc/gshadow, etc/ntp.conf, /etc/vmware/esx.conf and any custom scripts

these should assist as a reference while rebuilding..