Any issues with having esxi 4.1 hosts on vcenter 5 ?

[Conz]

I'm in a situation where I want to upgrade my vcenter server to v5 but am not able to upgrade all my esxi hosts from 4.1 to 5.

Are those 4.1 hosts going to need v5 licenses on the v5 vcenter or will it take the 4.1 license keys ?

This will have to run for about 1 or 2 months before all the esx hosts can go to v5.

[chriswahl · Accepted solution]

The 4.x hosts will continue to use the vSphere 4 licenses. vCenter will ask for a new license key for itself when you upgrade to 5, and any ESXi hosts you upgrade will require licenses on vSphere 5.

[truo1van]

Can I ask for confirmation, to upgrade 4.1 U1 (VC and Hosts) to vSphere 5, need to do followed in order:

1) Upgrade VC to 5

2) Upgrade UPdate Manager to 5

3) Use (optional) Update Manager to load in the vsphre 5 ISO to scan/remeidate the target 4.1 U1 host

esx4.1 U hosts happily live under VC5, even in same cluster with mix of vsphere5 + 4.1?

The above steps were how we did our upgrades from 3.5 to 4 and 4 to 4.1, 4.1 to 4.1U1

I believe with vpshere 5, there is NO Update Manager batch ZIP file to upgrade hosts. USe the single same vsphere 5 ISO ==> full fresh install or upgrade on the physical box or loaded via VUM5. You cant load this v5 ISO onto VUM 4.

Pls comment/verify

thanks

[chriswahl]

This is a pretty good guide for upgrading to vSphere 5.

http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/2011/08/how-to-upgrade-to-vsphere-5/

[Conz]

Thanks. Time to start upgrading.