Reinstall ESXi on host in existing cluster.

[jmtoman]

Hi all,

I have three hosts running ESXi 5, and a physical vCenter server, the hosts are all in a HA/DRS cluster.  I need to reinstall ESXi on each host because of an incorrect raid configuration on each host.  Was wondering what the correct steps to safely do this as I have a few guests running.

I was thinking:

1) Enter host into maintenance, disconnect

2) Rebuild host and reconfigure networking options

3) Add to vCenter again

4) Repeat for hosts 2 & 3

Is that it?

Anything I'm missing? Will anything with the licensing be affected?

Thanks in advance!

[AndySimmons]

If you have any templates, it'll save some headache if you convert them to VMs first.

Otherwise, that all looks fine. I'm sure you meant to imply this step when adding it to vCenter, but add it back into the cluster and let it finish the HA configuration to be safe, before you put another in maintenance mode.

It will let you reassign the license back to that host when you connect it back to vCenter. Nothing to worry about there.