How to Upgrade VMFS-3 to 5

[BadrMepco]

Hi,

Recently I upgraded my two VM hosts from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0 U1 successfully.

Also Tools of VMs has been updated.

Now I want to upgrade VMFS3 into VMFS5. Let me know that all my VM's will need to power off?

Also I am using RAW LUN with Exchange server that is attached directly in the VM.

During upgrade this RAW LUN will be affected or any pre-requisites for this?

Kindly guide me how to do upgrade all VMFS including those are attached with VMs directly and running.

[a_p_]

You can upgrade the VMFS datastores online. No need for downtime, just click the Upgrade link for each datastore. The upgrade is done in a few seconds.

RDM's are not affected.

André

[MarekZdrojewski]

Hi,

Your VMs will not have to be powered off when you do an in place upgrade from VMFS3 to VMFS5. It's done on the fly, there are however some caveats. Please read this whitepaper about the considerations on upgrading to VMFS5.

Imo, I'll go for creating a new VMFS5 datastore in stead of upgrading existing VMFS3 to fully take advantage of the new features. Simply move the VMs to a temporary LUN, delete the old one, create a new one formatted with VMFS5. Move the VMs back.

RDMs are indeed not affected.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

[sparrowangelste]

My upgraded VMFS-5 does not have a 1MB block size. Why?

Upgraded VMFS-5 partitions will retain the partition  characteristics of the original VMFS-3 datastore, including file  block-size, sub-block size of 64K, etc. To take full advantage of all  the benefits of VMFS-5, migrate the virtual machines to another  datastore(s), delete the existing datastore, and re-create it using  VMFS-5.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&e...