VMware Cloud Community
arkhaminmate11n
Contributor
Contributor

Why is an in-place upgrade of ESXi Installable not possible on a boot LUN (SAS or FC disks) which also contains a VMFS partition?

Does anyone know why an in-place upgrade of ESXi Installable is not

possible on a boot LUN (SAS or FC disks) which also contains a VMFS

partition? I can do an in place upgrade on servers with other storage devices that have both on the same partition. It just seems odd that such an upgrade is not possible on specific hardware. So I am hoping someone can explain why there is such a limitation.

Here is a direct link to the KB article.

KB Article

Reply
0 Kudos
6 Replies
RParker
Immortal
Immortal

>Does anyone know why an in-place upgrade of ESXi Installable is not possible on a boot LUN

Well in the first place you should NOT upgrade ESX you should always perform a NEW install, that's just good practice.

And for another, ESXi has always traditionally been hard to "upgrade" perhaps because the practice to do a new install.

</div>

Reply
0 Kudos
arkhaminmate11n
Contributor
Contributor

So what is the ideal installation method when one has a single VMware server which will be the home to both the VMWare installation and the datastore?

Reply
0 Kudos
RParker
Immortal
Immortal

You can install just do a NEW install not an upgrade

Reply
0 Kudos
arkhaminmate11n
Contributor
Contributor

I cannot upgrade my v3.5 installation from the v4 upgrade disk. Performing an upgrade in this manneterl will blow away the datastore. I have 1 TB of Vms on this machine. I do not want to lose all this data. Again, I have one VMware server with both the Vmware and datastore on the same partition. Performing an upgrade from the utlity will not work because of the aforementioned limitation with the v4 upgrade (I have SAS drives in my server). I do not understand why the v4 upgrade is blocked when the Vmware/Datastore are on the same partition AND the hardware is SAS. This makes no sense as upgrades to v4 work when the hardware is SATA. If VMWare does not want users to install both the VMWare software and the datastore on the same drive, that's fine. I would like to know why there is a specific hardware limitation with SAS drives. I also want to know what the ideal installation method is for users who have 1 server and plan on installing VMWare and the datastore on this 1 server.

Reply
0 Kudos
Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

That would be because the VMWare Host Update utility can upgrade a running ESXi 3.5 server to ESXi 4U1.

If you have a bootable CD, you have an install CD, not an upgrade CD. What you are looking for is the .zip file that you read with the Host Update Utility.

I had a large number of ESXi3.5 servers installed on the boot LUN, using SAS drives and never had an issue upgrading and retaining my data,

Edit:

I referenced more your statement about an "upgrade disk", than the article. I really can't follow that article because, as I said, I ran this upgrade with the upgrade tool many times without issue.

Reply
0 Kudos
arkhaminmate11n
Contributor
Contributor

I cannot upgrade my server using the Upgrade Host Utility. I receive an error message that says "Unsupported Disk." When I contacted VMware Support, the tech pointed me to the KB article at the beginning of the post that says that an in place upgrade of EXSi is not possible on a boot LUN which also contains a VMFS partition. My server has SAS drives.

I have successfully used the Upgrade Host Utility on servers with a SATA controller.

I cannot install VMware v4 from a CD as this will destroy my datastore. VMWare support claims the only option available to me is to move 1 TB of data off my server, perform a clean install, then move the 1 TB of data back. I find this to be a ridiculous solution. And thus, I am curious why VMWare is stating that an upgrade is not possible when the server has SAS. It seems as though such a limitation is entirely related to a limitation in the upgrade program.

Any information on this limitation would be appreciated.

Reply
0 Kudos