VMware 3.02 migration to 3.50

[Vin8140_123VM]

Hello all,

I was wondering if any one can help guide or point me in the right direction for this type of migration.

Has anyone done this in production? if so any helpful hints, white papers, issues that they ran into would be most helpful.

I read about something called VM converter, though I'am not sure if this tool is correct for a Physical host upgrade.

I have 5 seperate machine that run 3.01, and 3.02. They all need to be upgraded to 3.5. (Each has 4 vm's win2k3 running on them)

thx much !

[BenConrad]

If you are on 3.0.x you are using VMFS ver 3 and that means smooth sailing to ESX 3.5 U1.

1) Upgrade to VC 2.5, make sure all of your hosts get the updated vpx agents

2) download the 3.0.x > 3.5 updates

3) download the 3.5 > 3.5 U1 updates & patches

4) disconnect your VMFS volumes from the SAN (best practices)

5) Upgrade to 3.5 with esxupdate

6) Upgrade to 3.5 U1 with all patches with esxupdate

Ben

[AWo]

It was a very easy update in my case. The thing which saved the most time was that VMotion was working and all guest's and VMFS volumes were already up to version 3.

Read this Upgrade guide, which covers the migration from 2.5 and 3.0 to 3.5. I found every necessary information about the steps there: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_upgrade_guide.pdf

Be aware of the rights for the database user while upgrading the VC database. The database user you use to connect to the VC database should only have "db_owner" role, not the "system administrator" role. Otherwise it may wipe your DB (I got a warning but I wouldn't bet on it in any case). In addition and only during the VC database upgrade he also needs the "db_owner" rights to the "msdb" database.

[depping]

4) disconnect your VMFS volumes from the SAN (best practices)

in other words, disconnect storage... so disconnect FC cabling and or Ethernet for iSCSI.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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[TomHowarth]

number 4 is not strictly neccessary if you are doing an upgrade as by default ESX will leave VMFS formatted partition alone. however if you are doing a reinstall then for safety I would disconnect the fibre (making sure that you have correctly labeled them for re-attachment

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator