vCenter Upgrade when a VM is used?

[stanj]

I have read several postings and in the vSphere Installation guide that installing vCenter in a VM is an option and is recommended.

The question I have is on the upgrade side.

There are basically three phase during upgrade - Upgrade vCenter or install vCenter on a new system, Upgrade ESX Server from 3.4 to 4.0, upgrade the VM's. Phase four could be considered the licensing. If a VM is used for vCenter 4 and is on an ESX 3.5 host, what is the sequence for upgrading?

Do you first install vCenter 4 on the VM that reside on an ESX 3.5 host?

If so, what happens to the vCenter 4 on the VM when the ESX 3.5 host is updated?

Has anyone upgraded to 4.0 and runing vCenter in a VM?

[vmroyale]

Hello.

There are basically three phase during upgrade - Upgrade vCenter or install vCenter on a new system, Upgrade ESX Server from 3.4 to 4.0, upgrade the VM's. > If a VM is used for vCenter 4 and is on an ESX 3.5 host, what is the sequence for upgrading?

The same as you just described - vCenter, ESX, VMs

Do you first install vCenter 4 on the VM that reside on an ESX 3.5 host?

Yes.

If so, what happens to the vCenter 4 on the VM when the ESX 3.5 host is updated?

Nothing really. It just keeps chugging along, assuming you can VMotion it. If not you would have to temporarily live without it or move it to a different host.

Has anyone upgraded to 4.0 and runing vCenter in a VM?

Did one last week with vCenter in a virtual machine. Took a backup of the database, took a snapshot of the virtual machine running vCenter and did an in-place upgrade to vCenter 4. Then knocked out the ESX hosts. Everything worked fine. I did not do the VM hardware upgrade on the vCenter virtual machine. If you do, just make sure to do it after you upgrade all of your ESX hosts.

Good Luck!

[stanj]

Thanks

Good answers.

We do have an EqualLogic SAN configured with five Dell 2950's but only have a Standard License, so no vmotion.

I am kind of leaning that way (installing vCenter on a VM) after reviewing the following

Also, to throw into this mix, we have Lab Manager that we may deploy.

However, I do not know the detailed requirements for installing Lab Manager if you already have a VM infrastructure deployed (vCenter, ESX, SAN, etc).

I may have to post this to the Lab Manager community.