Upgrade from esx 3.5 to vSphere 5

[lanceb73]

I'm planning on upgrading my existing esx 3.5 to vSphere 5 this weekend and just wonder if there any big gotchas to be aware of? I've already got the vSphere 5 licenses and the vcenter server built. I've got 3 servers that and I've confirmed with that bootable vmware tool that they can support 64bit my plan of attack is as follows.

1. Either migrate or power off all servers on host 1

2. Put host 1 in maintenance mode

3. Remove host 1 from cluster

4. Install and configure vSphere 5 on host 1 i.e. networking, nfs datastores etc

5. Connect to host 1 with vSphere 5 client

6. Import new vCenter server to host 1 and power on

7. In vCenter client add host 1 to the cluster

8. Install the client tools onto new vCenter client and reboot if needed etc

9. Import servers from old host 1 3.5 to new host 1 5.0

10. Uninstall old client tools, install new client tools on servers and reboot if needed

11. Power off servers on host 2.

12. Put host 2 in maintenance mode.

13. Remove host 2 from cluster.

14. Install and configure vSphere 5 on host 2 i.e. networking, nfs datastores etc

15. Import host 2 into cluster

16. Import servers that were on old esx 3.5 host 2 to new vSphere host 2

17. Uninstall old client tools from servers install new client tools.

18. Repeat for host 3

Any comments/suggestions would be appreciated.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - don't know if you had taken a look at the upgrade guide - http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-501-upgrad... - has a lot of great information.

Wat you propose sounds good but I would take more advanctege of vmotion -

[lanceb73]

Thanks, I've looked at that guide and its got some good info but it really pertains to upgrading from 4.x to 5.x and I'm running 3.5.  You mentioned taking advantage of vmotion if I did it my route I wouldn't be able to take advantage of vmotion but if I removed my hosts from existing 3.5 virtual center version 2.5.x  and imported them into my virtual center 5.x then I would be able to use vmotion and vmotion off my running vms, upgrade the host, then upgrade the tools?

[weinstein5]

If your at the latest Update for esx 3.5 the document will apply as well and you can follow the procedures to move from 3.5 to 5 - and yes you can vmotion between ESX 3.5 and ESXi 5.0 when both are managed by vCenter 5