Was told to upgrade our esx4 to esx4i as esx4 is going away?

[CTgeek]

Well well.  This is interesting and I wanted to find out what really is happening.   We were just told by one of our 3rd party technicians today that we should change our ESX4 servers ( should built a new ESX 4.1.0 with build-260247  on it) to ESX4i. From what I undersand the last update to ESX4 is getting ready to be rolled out and then it will be replaced with ESX4i.  I'd like to have feedback on this and get it what really is happening as we just built our servers (4 of them) and don't want them to be outdated before we start our XEN environment.  Thanks!

[weinstein5]

Welcome with to the Forums - Yes it is true. 4.1 will be the last version that will include the ESX version. From here on out you will only be able to get the ESXi version. ESX will still be supported on the 4.1 platform until the end of life for that version- so if you need to do a new install or upgrade I would consider moving to ESXi unless you have some third party app that requires the Service Console -

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[vmroyale]

Hello.

You have time, and the change is not something you have to do right now.  Check out the ESX and ESXi Info Center for more info about this.

Good Luck!

[DSTAVERT]

4.1 will be the last version of ESX classic. Support for the 4.x of ESX classic versions will be available for several years.

[idle-jam]

Upgrading from ESX to ESXi is pretty simple and is very well documented process. Alternatively you can wait for the next release where you could do a ESX to ESXi conversion if the current is running perfectly fine.

[a_p_]

From what I undersand the last update to ESX4 is getting ready to be rolled out and then it will be replaced with ESX4i

Version 4.1 is the last version with both editions, ESX and ESXi. If you are going to do a fresh installation anyway, then you should consider to go with ESXi. AFAIK ESX 4.1 will be maintained as long as ESXi 4.1.

André

[Josh26]

Hi,

The phasing out of ESX has been slated since the release of ESXi 3.5. I definitely wouldn't have built any new ESX 4.1 servers without a reason.

[bulletprooffool]

Esx is going, but will continue to be fully supported.

I agree that your next move should be ESXi - but I wouldn't bother doing the upgrade until you feel there is a need to upgrade.

If your technician is trying to push you to go that way NOW, ignore him - you are already on ESX 4.0 and there is no critical  need to do any upgrading right away.

I'd hold fire until the next big uypgrade of VMware comes along and you decide you need to upgrade (at which poiinbt you can go from 4.0 to 4.xi, or 5i, or whatever it is)

I use ESXi exclusively, but I only converted when I moved from 3.5 to 4.0(i)