VMware Cloud Community
NMRaju
Contributor
Contributor

Can we directly upgrade ESX3.5 to ESXi5.1

Hi'

We are planning to upgrade our 3.5 to 5.1, is it possible?

if so, can you please share the steps

Thanks,

Naresh

7 Replies
NMRaju
Contributor
Contributor

Oops! .... VMWare does not support it seems

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal

check this video..hope it will help you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSaNoMER2Hw

Reply
0 Kudos
nkrishnan
Expert
Expert

You have to do a multi step upgrade to come to ESXi5.1 Before upgrade make sure your platform is 64bit and hardware is part of ESXi5.1 HCL. Take the backup of the VMs if its resides on local disks. Once the host upgrade completed, you need to upgrade VMFS/Virtual machine hardware and Virtual machine tools for best performance and 5.1 features.

--Nithin
BenLiebowitz
Expert
Expert

The first step is to check your hardware against the VMware HCL. The next step is upgrading vCenter.  This is always the first VMware product to upgrade before upgrading the hosts. 

As the others have said, there is no direct upgrade path from ESX to ESXi.  You'll be forced to rebuild. 

If you have more than one host in the cluster, it's recommended to migrate your VMs off and pull the host out of the cluster.  You may need to adjust your HA settings to do so.  Then, I typically break your raid-array(s) on the host and re-create them, so you're starting fresh (this part isn't necessarily recommended, but I personally prefer to do it this way.)  Once you get ESXi 5.1 installed, you can re-connect the host to your vCenter to manage it (don't put it into the cluster until you've verified that all the networks & datastores are visible.)

Repeat these steps for the other hosts in your cluster.  Once they're all upgraded, you'll need to upgrade VMware Tools on the VMs, the Virtual Hardware on the VMs, and the VMFS version on the datastores,

These are just the basic steps from memory, you're best bet is to follow the vSphere 5.1 Upgrade guide.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-51-upgrade...

Installing or Upgrading ESXi 5.1 Best Practices

VMware KB: Installing or upgrading to ESXi 5.1 best practices

Also, here are the Upgrading vCenter 5.1 Best Practices.

VMware KB:    Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.1 best practices 

Good luck!

- Ben

Ben Liebowitz, VCP vExpert 2015, 2016, & 2017 If you found my post helpful, please mark it as helpful or answered to award points.
Reply
0 Kudos
OscarDavey
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hello,

As I know you can upgrade to ESXi 5 only from ESXi 4 or ESXi4.1.

See this URL.

VMware KB: Methods for upgrading to ESXi 5.5

Hope helped you.

Reply
0 Kudos
Scruffy_Nerfher
Contributor
Contributor

Also keep in mind, if you have any parallel printer port cards for licensing dongles, in our case Sigmanest, ESXi v5.x has "retired" that functionality.  That was a huge deal for us.  If we stick with our old Sigmanest software, we're mired to a dongle and we can't virtualize that machine using ESXi v5.x.  This left us with two options:
1)  Keep running our old Sigmanest "server," which means a physical machine, running in perpetuity, thus negating virtualizing this system

2)  Spend about $12,000-$15,000 for the later version of Sigmanest, which does not require a parallel port dongle.

Given that the old version and the new version both meet our needs, I found it completely inane to even remotely consider spending approximately $13,500 to basically repurchase the same functionality.  In the end, I opted for a physical machine in perpetuity.  I can purchase about 16 computers, for the same monetary investment.  Conservatively figuring that each system should last about 5 years before failure, that's 80 years worth of systems...I'll have been dead for several decades by then. 

We would have even paid a (reasonable) dollar amount for that functionality to be reactivated but apparently VMWare feels it's time to retire this feature, even though there are thousands of people still using this functionality (it would sure be nice if they would listen to their customers...kind of reminds me of M$).   BTW: It's obvious this feature has simply been turned-off in v5.x - not actually removed.  You can see the radio button greyed out, so the functionality is still there, merely rendered impotent.

Just be forewarned, "Newer doesn't always equate to being better."

Reply
0 Kudos
OscarDavey
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

You must upgrade to 4 or 4U1 before you can go to vSphere 5.  You should also check out the HCL to ensure your hardware will work sucessfully with the target platform.

Yours, Oscar

Reply
0 Kudos