Update datastore or virtual hardware first in vSphere 5 migration??

[tlyczko]

Which should be updated first during a vSphere 5 migration??

The datastores or VMware Tools and virtual hardware??

Some things I've read suggest the datastores should be upgraded first...

I'm wondering because I've realized I have two mission-critical VMs which I think may be a vApp but I'm not sure...

They're really appliances...most all other VMs are Windows VMs...

Thank you, Tom

[aravinds3107]

As far i know not seen anything specified thatdatastore to be upgrade before VMware tool and virtal hardware.

I would suggest to upgrade Vmware tools and Virtual hardware. If its possible to create a new VMFS5 datstore insted of upgrading from VMFS3

Refer Upgrade 5 Best Practise guide and Upgrade checklist

[tlyczko]

The checklist mentions upgrade virtual hardware before upgrade datastore, after upgrading vmware tools on all vms, AFTER getting all hosts per se on vSphere 5.0.

Hence what I will do unless someone says something different is upgrade the hosts with VUM, then upgrade vmware tools on all guest vms, then upgrade the virtual hardware, then upgrade the datastores (clean reformat).

Thank you, Tom

[RanjnaAggarwal]

I don't think so there is any issue if you will upgrade the datastore first or the vm tools or vm hardware.

[saurabhbhattach]

Yes Tom this is the correct Way. I am not sure whats your cluster's state. But If we are talking about a mixed environment where we have a few Esxi 4.1 hosts, a few 5.0 hosts and a few VMFS-3 datastores and a few VMFS-5 datastores then the right sequence really makes a huge difference. Because you can't upgrade VM Hardware from say version 7 to version 8 unless you upgrade all the hosts first to 5.0 since only 5.0 supports Version 8 and so on.

[RanjnaAggarwal]

There is no need to consider anything because all of them are independent to each other. That's why you can upgrade anything first.

[Kasraeian]

Ranjna Aggarwal wrote:

There is no need to consider anything because all of them are independent to each other. That's why you can upgrade anything first.

As it mentioned on page "43" in the "VMware vSphere 5.0: Upgrade Best Practice" under "Virtual Hardware" section, "VMwaew Tools" should be install before upgrading "Virtual Hardware" so some items are sequential.

tlyczko, Also you can check "4 steps" which mentioned in the "VMware vSphere Upgrade Center\Understanding the Migration Path to VMware vSphere 5" page, it's clearly stated the sequences.

[RanjnaAggarwal]

but tell me one thing is this tested by you that it should be first otherwise some problems might be there?

[Kasraeian]

If you mean testing steps noted by "VMware" on the "VMware vSphere Upgrade Center\Understanding the Migration Path to VMware vSphere 5" page, not tested but implemented some how; we had upgraded our 20 servers, 1 vCenter and about 600 virtual desktops (whole infrastructure) from vSphere 4.0 to vSphere 5.0 by similar steps.

Similar because we had a VDI project and we had to upgrade other elements as well to version 5.0.

In that time, we'd scheduled two seperate days downtime (actually 00:00 to 06:00) for shuting down all vDesktops and upgrade process.

First we updated our vCenter server to version 5.0 so it can manage 10 server (one cluster on two HP Blade enclosures) which updated to vSphere 5.0 at the same time as well as 10 remaining hosts (vSphere 4.0).

Then in the other days, we upgraded other hosts to vSphere 5.0 as well as updating their VMs "VMware Tools" and later their "Virtual Hardware" and so on.

[RanjnaAggarwal]

But if it is possible for you please test that in your test environment and tell me if any error is reported. It's my personal view i don't think so this order does matter. And tell me what may be possible issues you can face after changing this order. I found this from your posted link can u tell me the meaning of this also:-

You can perform an orchestrated upgrade of Virtual Machines with vSphere Update Manager, which allows you to upgrade VMware Tools and virtual hardware at the same time

[Kasraeian]

Ranjna Aggarwal wrote:

But if it is possible for you please test that in your test environment and tell me if any error is reported. It's my personal view i don't think so this order does matter. And tell me what may be possible issues you can face after changing this order.

Based on attached screen shots in mixed environment, datastore can't be upgrade from VMFS3 to VMFS5 if both version of vSphere was connected to one LUN, which means "VMware Tools" can be upgraded sooner than VMFS.

As it mentioned on page "43" in the "VMware vSphere 5.0: Upgrade Best Practice" under "Virtual Hardware" section, "VMwaew Tools" should be install before upgrading "Virtual Hardware" so some items are sequential. (from my previous post here)

There might be no difference (from generating error perspective) on the order of "Upgrading VMware Hardware" and "Upgrading VMFS" but as it's mentioned by "VMware, Inc." and there is a chance that we can upgrade "Virtual Hardware" sooner, I'd personally follow the mentioned steps in "VMware vSphere 5.0: Upgrade Best Practice".

I found this from your posted link can u tell me the meaning of this also:-

You can perform an orchestrated upgrade of Virtual Machines with vSphere Update Manager, which allows you to upgrade VMware Tools and virtual hardware at the same time

For this part you can check this link.