vCenter upgrade and linked mode

[Buck1967]

I'm currently planning on upgrading my vCenter to 4.1. I'm current running 4.0u1 on Windows 2008R2. I have 5 vCenters that are in linked mode. Do I have to do all the upgrades in a single session or can they be done over a month or so?

[chriswahl]

Not sure on 4.0u1 to 4.1 Linked Mode, however I do have a 4.1 VC Linked with a 4.1u1 VC. I believe the only requirements are that the VC be vCenter 4.0 Standard or higher per the documentation (link below).

To join a vCenter Server group, you enter the fully qualified domain name (or IP address) of a remot...

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsp40_e/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#context=setup&file=c_lm_pre.html

[Buck1967]

Helpful link to the documentation but,

I'm still looking for this answer. Is anyone operating in this mode? Any known issues?

I am looking more for real life experience rather than the documentation.

[GodTheHamster · Accepted solution]

Yeah, you can link 4.0 with 4.1.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/280846

[mark_chuman]

The formal answer we received while discussing upgrade plans with our TAM was yes you can run linked VCs in mixed mode and do not have to upgrade them all at once, but upon upgrading our lab infrastructure (4 linked VCs) I did see some odd errors when connecting in while in mixed mode.  Just for that reason we've decided to upgrade all 7 of our production vCenter servers (linked) over one weekend, to minimize the period of time we run mixed.

[Buck1967]

What were some of the errors?

Are you able to share?

I'll probably plan on the same to upgrade all of the vCenter in a single weekend as well.

One issue I saw when we implemented our linked mode was the if a user didn't have access to one of the vCenter if popped up an errors stating the connection failed. I worked around that by adding a folder called "no access" and gave everyone read access to that. Now they simply see a "no access" folder if they don't have access to any particular vCenter.

Buck

[mark_chuman]

Here is one of the errors, which may be something we could have ignored, but it just further enforced the thought that we didn't buy much (if anything) by stretching the upgrades over a long period of time.

[mark_chuman]

Interesting KB - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1026346&sl... 0 167778790

Looks like you may hit this if you have more than 3 linked VCs.  I don't see much of a choice, but to upgrade all of them as quickly as possible to minimize hitting this.  I confirmed with our support person that this will not result in any long term damage, but will be more of a nuisance to those connecting in during the mixed phase.