How to upgrade ESX 3.5 build number 123630 to ESXi 5.0

[vipal]

Hello,

I am planning to upgrade my four ESX 3.5 123630 (In cluster) to ESXi 5.0. We are having HP DL380 G5 hardware. I am little bit confused about upgrade process.

As a standard practice should we go ahead with step by step upgrade or clean install of ESXi 5.0 ? If step by step process, then what would be the upgrade procedure ?

a. Does esxupdate supported for upgrade from ESX 3.5 123630 or Update manager supported.

b. Can we upgrade directly to ESX 4.1 or need to upgrade ESX 4.0 first.

c. What are checkilst needs to be kept in mind while upgrading ESX host.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Vipal

[JCMorrissey]

Hi,

Yep according to :

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/324714

clean install required.

[admin]

I believe VUM won't allow you to directly upgrade, however, you can upgrade to 4.x and then from 4.x to 5.0.  Alternatively you can use the ESXi installation CD to upgrade for you, which I believe will work correctly.  The ESXi installer can also do a fresh installation while preserving your local VMFS partition on the same drive.