Upgrading to vCenter 4.0

[HWSmith]

Hello, this is my frist post to the communities, I've been trolling for years. Here's what my current state is:

10 Standalone ESX 3.5 Hosts

4 Clustered ESX 3.5 Hosts

vCenter 2.5 running on a virtual Windows 2003 Server. SQL Database on a separate SQL server (SQl2005)

Upgrade Service (not too stable)

Enterprise Converter

I would like to bring my entire infrastructure to the vSphere level. The first step is to obviously upgrade vCenter to 4.0. Towards that end, I have created a new virtual Windows 2008 64 bit server. I would like to get vCenter and Upgrade Service up and running on this new server. Once vCenter is upgraded, I will take some time to make sure the infrastructure is stable before I start to up date the hosts to ESX 4.

I am assuming that when I install vCenter4 on the new server, it will ask for the database location which I can point to, it will modify the schema of the database and ready it for vCenter4. vCenter4 will then install.

Q1) When the install finishes and I launch the VI client pointed to the new vCenter, will my inventory show up just like now with the appropriate clusters and hierarchy and resource pools?

Q2) It sounds like if i want to continue running ESX 3.5 hosts on vCenter4, I still need a licesnse server, does this mean that I have to install that awful flexLM utility on this new server?

Q3) As I upgrade individual hosts to ESX4, how do I change the licensing for that ONE host?

Any help will be VERY appreciated.

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I am assuming that when I install vCenter4 on the new server, it will ask for the database location which I can point to, it will modify the schema of the database and ready it for vCenter4. vCenter4 will then install.

Yes, there are also some permissions changes that need to happen prior.

Q1) When the install finishes and I launch the VI client pointed to the new vCenter, will my inventory show up just like now with the appropriate clusters and hierarchy and resource pools?

Yes, if you use your old database.

Q2) It sounds like if i want to continue running ESX 3.5 hosts on vCenter4, I still need a licesnse server, does this mean that I have to install that awful flexLM utility on this new server?

You will still need the old Flex license server, but you could continue to run it from the old server or set it up just about anywhere until it is no longer needed. You don't have to put it on the new vCenter server.

Q3) As I upgrade individual hosts to ESX4, how do I change the licensing for that ONE host?

Use the licensing option in the Configuration tab of each ESX host to do this.

Additional information that may be of help:

kb 1009039 - Upgrading to ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices

vSphere Upgrade Guide

Good Luck!

[mark_chuman]

Fyi, pay close attention to the OS firewall when having problems/issues. We ran into many problems that were caused by the firewall in 2k8 (enabled by default in our enterprise in 2k8).