Upgradtion of Vcenter 2.5 to 4.1

[vm7614]

Hi i m Arun, i m new in vmware community, we have esx 3.5. We want to upgrade 3.5 to 4.1.

without downtime and data loss can we migrate vmfs3 to vmfs4...

[nkrishnan]

Hi Arun,

Welcome to community,

Could you please explain about your datacenter environment. how many host, vCenter server version, Virtual machine location.

If you have HA-DRS configured and all your Virtual machines are placed in Shared storage, go head and do the remediation on Cluster level. Update Manager put the host in maintenance mode, mean while DRS trigger VMotion and move all the virtual machine to other hosts. The update Manager upgrade the individual host sequencially and follow the above sequece for other hosts as well

Refer Update Manager Guide for more information

You need vCenter server 4.1, Update Manager 4.1 and all the hosts are connected to vCenter server and enabled HA-DRS.

Thanks

Nithin

[vm7614]

Thanks for ur reply...

We have Vcenter server 2.5 and 4 ibm x3650 server.In which we have configured ESX 3.5 and installed different-different OS.

Now we want to upgrade Vcenter server 2.5 to 4.1 and ESX 3.5 to 4.1.In Shared storage we are using Netapp N 3600 filler.

My doubt is that can we upgrade online esx 3.5 vmfs3 to esx4.1 vmfs4 without data moving another loction and downtime.

We are not using HA configuration...

Regards,

Arun.

[arturka]

Hi

Steps:

1. Check if your legay servers are supported by vSphere version which you wanna install
   http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/search.php
2. Upgrade vCenter server
3. Upgrade VMwarer update manager
4. Upgrade hosts

Here you go what to do with vCenter server

http://vmwaremine.com/2011/10/07/upgrade-to-vsphere-4-1-u1-part1/

Artur

[nkrishnan]

ESX3.5 to ESX4.1 upgrade is  supported. but it need downtime for servers. Here your scenario has shared storage and all the virtual machines are running in it. So do the vmotion to another host and upgrade the server individually.

When you upgrade the system to ESX4.1, and you create VMFS on ESX3.5 version, it doesnt required any upgrade.The core on-disk VMFS format has undergone extremely minor changes, so there is no need to upgrade or create a new VMFS for ESX4.1. VMFS driver was extensively updated to allow things like thin provisioning.

Thanks

Nithin

[vm7614]

Is there vmware Vcenter 4.1 evaluation version available on vmware site or any another website....

Regards,

Arun..

[weinstein5]

Installing vCenter without a license will give you a 60 day evaluation license - 

[Mouhamad]

Hi there,

I believe it's the time to go for vSphere 5 and not 4.1

Since you're going to upgrade, why not to go directly to the latest?

Regards,

Mouhamad