Upgrade to vSphere from ESX 3.5 (experiences wanted)

[ralfgro]

Hi,

we have a 2 node ESX 3.5 / VI3 cluster which we want to upgrade to vSphere soon. I've found several resources related to the update from 3.5 to 4.x.

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

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

Before we start the upgrade (or think about it) I would like to hear some experiences how painfull the upgrade is and how much time will be needed.

About 30 VMs, mostly Linux (using vmdk files on our SAN)

Our hardware setup:

Server:2x ProLiant DL380 G5, each with 1x Intel X5355 (4 Cores) @ 2.66GHz, 20 GB ECC RAM

SAN:2x Brocade Silkworm 300 FC-Switch1x NetApp FAS2040, 1,5 TB Storage

[a_p_]

If you don't care about the historical performance data (or any other data) from the "old" Virtual Center, it's a painless and easy step to 4.x.

One possible way:

- vMotion all VM's to host1 (by putting host2 into maintenance mode)

- disable HA

- remove host2 from Virtual Center (if you want, you can omit this step)

- update firmware on host2

- install ESXi (installable) 4.x on host2 (ESX will not be continued in the future)

- create a new VM for the new vCenter Server on host2 and install vCenter Server (for version 4.1 you need a 64 bit OS)

- configure vCenter Server 4.x (in vCenter licensing add the link to the "old" license server, e.g. "27000@old-vcenter.local")

- disable the Virtual Center service on the old Virtual Center Server

- add both hosts to the new vCenter Server (into a cluster)

- vMotion all VMs to host2

- remove host from vCenter again

- update firmware on host1

- install ESXi (installable) 4.x on host1

- add host1 to the vCenter Server

- configure licensing and anything else you want/need

- delete your old Virtual Center Server

- update VMware Tools and the virtual hardware for the VM's

Done!

André

[a_p_]

... I didn't mention Update Manager. You may certainly want to setup update manager as well. However, I think that's nothing new for you.

André

[FredPeterson]

I concur with a.p. - if historical data doesn't mean anything, start fresh with a v4.1 vCenter server and data base and add the hosts in.

Myself thats what I did. I also performed the update from v3.5 to v4.1 using Update Manager and have had no problems.

The only painful thing is/was rebooting all of the VMs for their upgraded VMware Tools install. The hardware upgrade isn't necessary - but make new VMs with v7 hardware.

[ralfgro]

Thank you both for your answers. I read that using v5 hardware is called legacy mode and could be a performane issue?

[Ather_Beg]

Hi,

I upgraded our environment from ESX 3.5 Update 2 + VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 to vSphere 4 Update 1 + vCenter 4 Update 1. It was pretty painless, seamless and without downtime. My process is mentioned here:

http://atherbeg.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/how-to-upgrade-from-vi-3-5-to-vsphere-4-with-x64-vcenter-se...

http://atherbeg.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/how-to-upgrade-from-vi-3-5-to-vsphere-4-with-x64-vcenter-se... &

http://atherbeg.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/how-to-upgrade-from-vi-3-5-to-vsphere-4-with-x64-vcenter-se...

As you're upgrading to vCenter 4.1, the only difference I can think of is that your ODBC DSN will be 64-bit (i.e. the normal one). The one for Update Manager remains 32-bit (although I haven't confirmed that yet). Please note: I upgraded ESXs using the manual method so that I can control partitioning. You can use a method that suits you.

After the upgrade, upgrade VMware Tools first and then upgrade Virtual Hardware version (optional but useful to gain extra functionality). However, think of it as a motherboard replacement - so be careful.

[AndreTheGiant]

Running a VM with virtual hardware v4 do not have really big performance impact.

But you cannot use new features, like VMware FT, new SCSI and network virtual adapters, increamental backup and so on...

Andre

[ralfgro]

Seems that the vCenter migration is not necessary anymore, a different department is willing to share their vCenter host with us and we will get our own "container". We don't mind losing perfomance data etc.

Is it a problem keeping old snapshots? We use snapshots for different reasons and need to keep them a long time. I think I read somewhere that snapshots could be a problem when upgrading.

[AndreTheGiant]

On ESX/ESXi snapshots have another type of problems: you can go out of space of your datastore, you may have corruption of your vmdk, you have a slowdown of your disk access.

For those reason do not keep snapshots too much... Use clone or backup instead.

Andre