esxupdate & datastores

[Satishhalemani]

Hi,

We are planning to update the below using esxupdate so that we can add them to VCenter 5.0

ESX 3.5 to ESX3.5 U5

ESX 4.0 U2 to ESX 4.0 U3

These are mixed hosts in a single cluster and used shared SAN storage as datastores.

I will be doing the update one server at a time after migrating the VM's and putting it into maintenance mode.

Question is whether i need to get the shared storage unmapped for that particular ESX host before doing the update or is it ok to leave it mapped. The last time we did we had unmapped it. Please suggest. Any best practices are also welcome.

Thanks in advance

Satish

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - You can leave the datastores mapped since ESXi 5 can still access VMFS 3 - tjhe upgrades to VMFS 5 are done as a seperate step

I have also moved this to a more approriate forum -

[Satishhalemani]

Hi Weinstein5,

Sorry. I am still confused. Are you suggesting that I leave the fibre cable as it is..Let me give an overview of what I'm trying to,

1. Copy the update bundele.zip to ESX host /temp folder

2. VMotion all the VM's off the ESX host(on which we are going to install ESX 3.5 U5 or ESX 4.0 U3 - No fresh install just the update)

3. Disconnect the fibre channel cable

4. Once VMotioned, put the host into maintenance mode

5. SSH to the ESX host and browse to the folder containing the update bundle.zip

6. Extract and run esxupdate <bundle.zip> update

7. After the update, reboot host

8. Reconnect fibre channel cable

9. Exit maintenance mode and Vmotion the VMs

We are not planning vm tools upgrade at the moment.

Now the question is 'whether Step#3 & 8 are mandatory'. Can we run this update with the datastores/shared storage still connected?

Thanks in advance

Regards

Satish

[aravinds3107]

I would suggest to disconnect the fibre cable before you perform the upgrade. Also i think you many need to update the VMware tool on VM's after the host upgrade.

[hpreyers]

1. Copy the update bundele.zip to ESX host /temp folder

2. VMotion all the VM's off the ESX host(on which we are going to install ESX 3.5 U5 or ESX 4.0 U3 - No fresh install just the update)

3. Disconnect the fibre channel cable

4. Once VMotioned, put the host into maintenance mode

5. SSH to the ESX host and browse to the folder containing the update bundle.zip

6. Extract and run esxupdate <bundle.zip> update

7. After the update, reboot host

8. Reconnect fibre channel cable

9. Exit maintenance mode and Vmotion the VMs

Probably a typo but I think you want to switch step 3 & 4 because you'll need the shared storage to succesfully vmotion the guests.

While it is not necessary to disconnect the FC cables, it is an extra safety precaution.

If DRS is licensed you can set the DRS setting to agressive so vSphere will take care of the cluster rebalance.

Regarding the vmware tools, you should upgrade them but you can decide to do this in the maintenance window because of the required reboot. You should take a look which guests are critical and which are non-critical. On the non-critical servers I would install the vmware tools and reboot them.

Optional you can use update manager to do the upgrade for you.

[Satishhalemani]

That was a good catch...indeed it was a typo

I think i will go with the disconnect the fibre channel cable... better safe than sorry.

Thanks a lot for the inputs