Virtual Center to update 4

[manojpeter]

Hi everyone,

We have VC2.5 and 24 ESX 3.5 hosts. All my esx 3.5 hosts are running with update-2 or update-3. We have plans to upgrade all esx hosts/virtual center to latest updates. Therefore, Please advise me the following:

1. what update is running on my virtual center which is showing "Version 2.5.0. Build 119598 ?"

2. Is that manadtory to update virtual center first prior to updating esx hosts to update-4. ?

3. How to upgrade virtual center to update-4 (latest), i mean step-by-step procedure?

4. Any Precautions to be taken prior to upgrading virtual center?

Many Thanks..

[mikeyhoward]

Hi everyone,

We have VC2.5 and 24 ESX 3.5 hosts. All my esx 3.5 hosts are running with update-2 or update-3. We have plans to upgrade all esx hosts/virtual center to latest updates. Therefore, Please advise me the following:

1. what update is running on my virtual center which is showing "Version 2.5.0. Build 119598 ?"

Looks like you are running Update 3

2. Is that manadtory to update virtual center first prior to updating esx hosts to update-4. ?

Update your Virtual Centre, then your VI client, then your ESX Hosts and finally the VMTools

3. How to upgrade virtual center to update-4 (latest), i mean step-by-step procedure?

Backup your Virtual Centre DB (including Update manager)

Insert the Update 4 CD and follow the instructions...it is a very straight forward process

4. Any Precautions to be taken prior to upgrading virtual center?

Ensure you backup your DBs as per above. If your Virtual Centre is running in a VM, I would also take a snapshot prior to running the upgrade, mainly for speed of recovery

Hope that helps

[manojpeter]

Many Thanks for the reply. Please also advise:

1. Will the online Backup the two db's (VCDB and VUM) on sql2000 server be sufficient or should I also take a ntbackup of virtual center (running on physical box) server also?

2. if possible please provide the links or pdf's for Virtual center upgrade. I do not have upgrade-4 CD, is this not downloadable and can be installed to server directly?

3. There are number of non compliant critical patches shown for esx hosts. Is that mandatory to apply all the patches shown under update manager tab for an ESX server ?

Thanks in advance.

[Troy_Clavell]

1. Will the online Backup the two db's (VCDB and VUM) on sql2000 server be sufficient or should I also take a ntbackup of virtual center (running on physical box) server also?

SQL 2000 is not a supported DB for vCenter4 and VUM4 ,but if still using 2.5.x just have full backup of your DB instances

2. if possible please provide the links or pdf's for Virtual center upgrade. I do not have upgrade-4 CD, is this not downloadable and can be installed to server directly?

yes, or you can download the .iso from or 2.5.5 http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/vc250u5/dGViZHd0QGJqQA==

3. There are number of non compliant critical patches shown for esx hosts. Is that mandatory to apply all the patches shown under update manager tab for an ESX server ?

You should check the patch details in if they are relevant to your environment, install them

[manojpeter]

Thanks for reply. Please note that we are having virtual center 2.5 and esx 3.5 hosts. I have mentioned the environment details at the beginning of post.

please advise to my questions.

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

i misread, the original question, but have updated my post.

...here is the Upgrade Guide

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_upgrade_guide.pdf

[manojpeter]

Many Thanks

[manojpeter]

Last one quickie.. Is that necessary to upgrade esx 3.5 hosts to latest

updates (i.e. update-4)? as we are currently running on esx 3.5 update-3

and update-2.

[Troy_Clavell]

U4 has been out for a long time, so I would update to U4... but again if your environment is not having problems then you can stay at your current build of ESX if you'd like, it's still supported. If it were my environment, I would get all the hosts updated to the same build level, but that's just my opinion.

U4 requires an upgrade of all the VMware Guest tools, so that is also some more work to get the guest tools updated.

[mikeyhoward]

You can run virtual center u4 and leave esx hosts at there current

revision if you wish although I would also advise upgrading them as

per Troys comments

On 29 Oct 2009, at 18:03, manojpeter <communities-emailer@vmware.com