upgrade esx 4.1 to esxi 4.1 in a cluster question

[sukid]

We have a cluster with 4 hosts. All hosts are running ESX 4.1. This Cluster has HA and DRS turn on. Now, I am planning to upgrade those host from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 4.1 one by one. Do I have to turn off HA and DRS before the upgrade?

[weinstein5]

No - but you should remove the host from the cluster and once the change from ESX to ESXi is done readd the host to the cluster -

[a_p_]

In addition to what weinstein5 said, going from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 4.1 is not an upgrade, but a fresh installation of the hosts.

The steps are basically:

• evacuate the host
• remove the host from the cluster
• remove the host from vCenter Server (this should free up the license)
• re-install and configure the host
• add the host to vCenter Server and the cluster

André

[sukid]

Thank you both for the quick response. That is very helpful. One last question just to double check. When I add the upgraded host back to the cluster, there will be esx and esxi host co-exist in one cluster until I complete the upgrade. I guess from what you said, that should be ok to have esx 4.1 and esxi 4.1 co-exist in one cluster with both HA and DRS turn on.

[a_p_]

Basically you can run ESX and ESXi in a mixed cluster. Just in case you run into an issue with configuring HA, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1019200 might help.

André