Upgrade vcenter to 5.1/5.5 or only up to 5.0 update 3??

[ranj]

vCenter v5.0.0 v755629

 

ESXi5 Hosts - v5.0.0 U3 1489271

 

 

Hi All

 

 

Thanks for reading my post.

 

 

I am currently working on a patching project to get all of our clusters up to a certain degree of updates and ensure all are at the same patching point.

 

We have 3 seperate clusters which are managed through 1 vcenter. In one of our clusters we have our newest hosts which are based on HP Proliant DL380p G8 but the rest of the cluster uses hardware HP Proliant DL380 G5 with a mixture of slightly different processor types, they are managed using EVC to allow us to migrate from one host to the other.

 

 

We have made a business decison that for the moment we are going to keep all of our hosts on v5.0.0 U3 build1489271 even though our newer hosts on one cluster could utilise v5.5 of vsphere mainly from a business continuity point of view as the machines in our DR site are also hosted on older kit which wouldnt accept v5.5.

 

 

Now all patching of the hosts is now complete, the next phase of my project is to look at getting our vCenter server upgrade from its current build of v5.0.0 755629.

 

 

I am in a dilemma, do I update our vCenter up to 5.0.0 Update 3 or do I potentially look at updating our vcenter to 5.1 or even up to 5.5 even though I wont be updating our hosts. by using a later version as and when we update the hardware of our hosts we could then benefit with utilising the new feature sets of 5.1 or 5.5. I am aware that going from 5.0 to 5.1/5.5 will be a bigger project than just moving from 5.0.0 to 5.0.0 U3.

 

 

Just wanted to get others views on this. I am under the understanding that even if the vcenter is on a higher level it still should mean that I can manage hosts on the lower 5.0.0. Are there also fundamental differences with regards to the Database?

 

 

Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be much appreciated.

 

 

Thanks

[bart21]

Hi

 

Vcentre 5.5 can manage lower hosts so that would work. Personally I would go 5.5.0b rather than 5.1. Sso is much improved in 5.5 as is the web client etc.

[xenonive]

I've just updated from 5.0 straight to 5.5 vCenter with no issues and updating my HP DL360 G7 to 5.5 too and left my HP DL 380 G5 on 5.0 with latest updates . Just make sure you get the HP version of ESX not the general release

[ranj]

I've just updated from 5.0 straight to 5.5 vCenter with no issues and updating my HP DL360 G7 to 5.5 too and left my HP DL 380 G5 on 5.0 with latest updates . Just make sure you get the HP version of ESX not the general release

 

We are already running the HP release over the VMware release. Quick question, I am guessing the HP version is more optimised for the hardware? is that why it get's the thumbs up over the general release or is there another reason for this?

[xenonive]

The HP release has the hp drivers included so vCenter can read all the server sensors and it has the best drivers for things like network and raid card . You can add the drivers in later if you didn't have HP ESXi image via offline bundles HP provide.

 

It's with adding the HP ESXi site to the update manager if you have it running to provide latest drivers and installing HP insight manager for installing latest firmwares.