Available vSphere features with ESX 3.5 hosts??

[dude098]

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me the available vSphere features and issues with running 3.5 hosts with a vSphere Virtual Center server?

We're looking to upgrade from VI 3.0 to 3.5 as our SAN is not certified yet with vSphere but I'm wondering if it's worth running VC server 4 with 3.5 hosts.

Thanks in advance!

[lamw]

afaik, you won't get any benefits with vSphere vCenter 4.0 + ESX 3.5 hosts, all the new/cool features will not be available until you have ESX(i) 4.0 hosts. You might be able to take advantage of a better search perhaps but there aren't any features that you'll get by using vCenter 4.0 and old 3.5 hosts. You might just want to keep vCenter 2.5uX and upgrade once you're ready to go to 4.0 hosts and don't forget when you upgrade you'll need to pay a difference in price, so probably wait on that unless you've already gotten the license to do so.

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William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

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[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - as William pointed out you will not gain any benefit by running vCenter 4.0 while your ESX hosts remain at 3.5 -

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[azn2kew]

The one thing is great with vCenter 4.0 is that it has new tab "Storage Views" which is sometimes convenient but its not a big deal for differences. With ESX 3.5 you can have that tab if you install the EMC storage view plugin.

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Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[TonyCoffman]

You do get some additional features but they will be vCenter features, update manager features and Orchestrator features, etc...

ESX 3.5 will be the same.