ESX Upgrade & Patching advice

[VirtualRed]

Hi

I have recently started a new position and I am looking to upgrade the existing ESX Infrastructure.

We currently run ESX 3.02 and Virtualcenter 2.02 and I am looking to upgrade to versions 3.5 and 2.5 respectively.

I have browsed through the upgrade guide and although it is documented as a minor upgrade I would appreciate any advice or tips from anyone who has carried out this upgrade.

In addition after the upgrade I would like to begin regular patching which has not previously been done, From what I understand Update Manager comes free with virtualcenter 2.5?

Having previously only managed patching in a windows environment, I would appreciate if anyone can provide any best practices or useful info they can pass on from experience of patching ESX hosts.

Thanks in advance

[AndreTheGiant]

I have browsed through the upgrade guide and although it is documented as a minor upgrade I would appreciate any advice or tips from anyone who has carried out this upgrade.

Usually "big" update are done with a reinstallation.

But you really want to do and upgrade first update your VC, then upgrade the ESXs (using CD or upgrade package files).

You could have some problem with VC if you have used MSDE, cause you have to change to SQL Express (or SQL Server).

From what I understand Update Manager comes free with virtualcenter 2.5?

Yes. Could be very usefull to update host.

And (if you do not have other infrastructure) also to update Windows guests.

Andre

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[depping]

I usually do most major update 3.0.x -> 3.5, 3.5 -> 4.0 with a reinstall to make sure you begin with a clean environment.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[VirtualRed]

So you would consider 3.0x to 3.5 to be a major and not a minor upgrade?

I assumed it would be minor as there are no changes to the vmfs volumes as would be going from 2.x to 3.x

[AndreTheGiant]

I assumed it would be minor as there are no changes to the vmfs volumes as would be going from 2.x to 3.x

Yes, is still VMFS 3, but is little difference.

Andre

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[jamieorth]

I would have to agree with Andre and Duncan. It is better to resinstall. VMFS is still version 3 for vSphere, but most users will install clean as it would be consider a major revision.

Regards...

Jamie

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[VirtualRed]

Ok so a clean re-install is considered the best way to approach this.

If I were to do a clean install would the following be the best course of install (Small cluster of 2 hosts, with around 30 VM's)

1. Turn off HA, and DRS in the cluster

2. Upgrade virtualcentre to version 2.5 (virtualcentre is itself a VM) and upgrade the virtualcentre database

3. Place ESX1 in maintenance mode and all let it migrate all machines to ESX2

4. Upgrade ESX1 to 3.5

5. Place ESX2 in maintenance mode and let it migrate all machines to ESX1

6. Upgrade ESX2 to 3.5

Any input much appreciated, just trying to be as well prepared for the upgrade as possible.

[AndreTheGiant]

Have a look also at this videos:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/upgrade.html

Andre

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[depping]

Yes I would consider it a major upgrade cause actually most of the components are touched. The procedure you described looks fine and is the approach I would also take!

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[ollivetti]

Hi!

I would also like to upgrade our 2 ESX 3.02 Servers to 3.5 Update 4.

We do not use HA and have our VMs on local storage (Raid 5)...well so there are approx. 25 VMs on one Server. Do I have to backup them all?

Or is it in this way better to just put in the new Version CD and do an Upgrade? Are there known issues?

Thank you very much!

[VirtualRed]

If you have not already seen it I found reading through this to be useful

Page 31 in particular gives a number of different upgrade scenarios, so you may find one that best fits your environment.

Common response from my original thread has been to do a clean install rather than upgrade, but I suppose this may not be suitable for everyone.