upgrade to vsphere from esx 3.5

[ful56_uk]

hi

 

i am thinking of upgrading to vsphere from esx 3.5.

 

I am not sure what route to go down, weather to do a full clean install or a upgrade.

 

has any one done one of these and if so what do you recommend and how did you find it. We have four host and about 25 vm's, they are run off sans.

 

thanks

 

mark

[DanW]

when i do my upgrades in July i will be doing clean installs

[ful56_uk]

may i ask why a clean install and not a upgrade any reason? i know stuff like this its better to do a clean install

[Theblacksheep]

I done upgrades.

 

Remove additional service console agents beforehand tho.

 

If you upgraded to ESX3.X from an earlier version, it is recommended to do a clean install. If you started on 3.X there's plenty o room on the boot partition for an ESX4 upgrade.

 

Look up the upgrade documentation. Once you have vCenter4 up and you have capacity to have 1 host down, a clean install and configure wont take much longer.

[apaton]

I agree with TheBalcksheep, upgrades are straight forward. I've always used the VMware Update Manager and not had a problem.

 

The only issues I've ran into is change of BIOS setting to allow virtualisation with 64bit.

 

Andy

[bio]

We allways do clean installs overhere.. a lot quicker then using that update manager

 

bio..

[techie08]

Is it just as easy to upgrade as it is to install? is it just a case if installing the new verison on each esx box then upgrading virtual centre?

What new benefits would VSphere give ove esx 3.5

 

Thanks

[bio]

Is it just as easy to upgrade as it is to install? is it just a case if installing the new verison on each esx box then upgrading virtual centre?

What new benefits would VSphere give ove esx 3.5

 

Thanks

 

There is a very good upgrade guide available at the vmware site. That show exactly on how to proceed

 

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_upgrade_guide.pdf

 

bio.

[_Adam_]

Upgraded without issue, VMware have done well with vsphere. The longest part is upgrading each guests hardware and installing the new Tools.

[techie08]

Upgraded without issue, VMware have done well with vsphere. The longest part is upgrading each guests hardware and installing the new Tools.

 

Excellent! Did you just upgarde your Virtual Centre or do a clean install? im toying with the idea of building a new 2008 r2 VM for vCentre.

 

Also did you simply upgrade your hosts or do a fresh install (wipe and load of esx/esxi?)

 

Thanks

[_Adam_]

Our licensed vSphere products came in at v4 and so previously I was talking about the ESXi hosts only.

 

But in the interest of getting you the answers you need I put forward your questions to a VMware Administrator friend of mine, here's what he said.

 

• vCenter inside a VM is fully supported by VMware. It’s not my preference, however saying that vCenter itself is not critical (i.e. all VM’s will still run if it is down). Mine is a Hyper-V VM on my DC outside VMware.

• Depends how complex your vCenter is, if it’s not overly complex with resource rules etc, then a fresh install is prob best, but an upgrade is also supported by VMware and will work fine (I did an upgrade).

• An upgrade of ESX/ESXi is fully supported and this is what I did. If you’re paranoid you can do a fresh install.

 

Hope this helps you.