ortHi all,
we currently have a few esxi3.5 hosts with out of date software, all has been fine until recently when we need to transfer data to and from the host outside of the VM's. after doing some research it was found that this was a bug in esxi 3.5 network drivers. The VM themselves seem to work fine but we wonder if the disk access could be faster as well.
So I bought an essentials package which included vcenter and installed that, no when I try to add the esxi3.5 free host I get a licensing error message, the esxi3. host is configured as standalone with serial. and vcentre seems to need a licence server to transfer the licenses
First apologies for my newbyness with regard to VMWare but I would like to upgrade the esxi3.5 free version and add it to the vcenter. Due to the slow disk access e.g it may take a ouple of days to copy the .vmdk image (120Gb) etc to somewhere else so I would like to do the upgrade in place if possible. Of course if this was esxi 4 the update manager in vcenter 5 would work. I haven't installed the update manager that came with vcentre 5 yet (as that is restricted to version 4 upgrades) but I tried to download update manager version 4 to see if I could install that to do the upgrade but unfortunately it is a restricted download and we we never purchased version. I was hopingto raise a support call but it seems its not included in the cheapo essentials version.
Hopefully there is a relatively easy solution but as I have spent two days now trawling for information and am getting no nearer to find a solution I though it best to ask the here
Thanks in advance for your newby tolerance and help
p.s VMware infrastructure client is version 2.5.0 Build 147633
and VMware ESX server 3i version 3.5.0 build 207095
Well, I can start off with "you get what you pay for" ![]()
Yes, you need a license server for vC5 to manage VI3. FlexLM is available somewhere around here. It can be loaded on the vCenter server.
Is your standalone VI3 licensing by key or by file?
I had several vCenters, and was able to copy-paste all of the license files together to get one FlexLM and vCenter to see all of the licenses.
Hopefully your Essentials included vMotion licensing too.
With vCenter, vMotion, and capacity, you can remove all the guests from one host, wipe and fresh install vS5, move guests back, and round-robin repeat to complete your farm without taking down a guest.
I'm in the midst of the same process... with the added fun of combining 3 farms into one.
We're licensed at Enterprise level with S&M (support and maintenance) So, I'm not sure what additional licensing hoops you may have to jump through.
Validate your hardware against the HCL.
Good Luck!
Admittedly I should know better about the free stuff, but these things start as a trial and then befor eyou know it its too late
We are a small company though with small servers so its hard to justify nearly equalling the cost of hardware with the VMsoftware alone i.e. other os or apps on top again, especially as we only run a couple of VM's on each, maybe it is time to setup a farm if I can convince the board.
Thanks for replying, The standalone serial numbers are keys, no file and I tried copy pasting these into vcenter but it objected as it expects a license file. Do you mean install flexm seperate to the vcentre license server and then move the licenses to that and then import?.
It seems that vmotion is not included so we will try and try and do a copy of the vm off the server at the weekend - this is teh issue disk access outside vm is very slow so it may not finish over weekend. Inside VM disk access is ok, then do a clean install of server to vsphere5 and copy back.
Thanks for help so far
I understand what you mean about the cost for small installations.
Once you start looking into high-availability and fault tolerance for multiple apps, it gets a little easier to justify.
In order for vCenter5 to manage vmware3 hosts, I had to install the FlexLM product somewhere and point vCenter 5 to it - obviously it is easiest if FlexLM is on the same box as vCenter. For the vm5 licenses, I can just plug them directly into vCenter5. No separate license manager/server needed.
Not real sure what to do regarding a license key vs file for FlexLM / vm3
For moving VMs - look at some tools from VEEAM (FastSCP ?). I haven't used them personally, but it looks like my predecessor did.
vMotion - intended for use with shared storage - re-reading, I didn't see you mention that.
Enjoy the ride!
