Vmware Vcenter 5 Upgrade Questions

[cptnjim]

I right now have Vmware Vcenter and Esxi from version 4 to version 5.  A couple questions:

1.  What is the easiest and most expediant way to perform these upgrades?

2.  Should I have Vcenter loaded on a physical host or is it alright to make it a virtual machine?  I currently have it as a virtual machine, but thought it might be an issue that it won't be available during upgrades of the host that the VM Vcenter is on.

[weinstein5]

Ialway go to the source - The VMware UPgrade Guide http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-upgrade...

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

1.  What is the easiest and most expediant way to perform these upgrades?

Make a backup of your vCenter DB, perform the install of vCenter5.  Then you can use VMware Update Manager to upgrade your ESXi Hosts.  However, I would choose to do a rolling rebuild. vSphere5 is a major release.

2.  Should I have Vcenter loaded on a physical host or is it alright to  make it a virtual machine?  I currently have it as a virtual machine,  but thought it might be an issue that it won't be available during  upgrades of the host that the VM Vcenter is on.

Go virtual, it's fully supported and you get the benefit of HA/DRS

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

[cptnjim]

I noticed that VMWare has a vcenter appliance that is prepackaged without having to build your own OS and then load the VCenter software. 

Does my Essentials Plus bundle entitle me to use the Vcenter Server Appliance or do I have to use Windows OS with VCenter for Windows?

[RParker]

cptnjim wrote:

I noticed that VMWare has a vcenter appliance that is prepackaged without having to build your own OS and then load the VCenter software. 

Does my Essentials Plus bundle entitle me to use the Vcenter Server Appliance or do I have to use Windows OS with VCenter for Windows?

License covers vCenter, it's not specific to OS type.