techie08 Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 Hi everyone I'm looking at upgrading from vsphere 4.0 to 5.1 and I wondered if any one has any good tried and tested guides? I currently have 3 esx 4 host with venter on a 2003 server so I know the vcenter will have to now be on a 64bit OS and esx servers will now have to be esxi. Thanks
FN-GM Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 I would start a brand new Vcenter server with server 2012. Add your 4.0 hosts. Then use the vmware update manager to update the hosts. Loads of guides on Youtube. Can be done in half a day.
DrCheese Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 server 2012 VCentre isn't supported on 2012 yet
techie08 Posted January 10, 2013 Author Posted January 10, 2013 (edited) I would start a brand new Vcenter server with server 2012. Add your 4.0 hosts. Then use the vmware update manager to update the hosts. Loads of guides on Youtube. Can be done in half a day. Do you mean a brand new database and configuration as well? Also, have VMware now done away with the maximum of 32gb RAM per host? Edited January 10, 2013 by techie08
Ephelyon Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 It's a tricky one as if you were reinstalling ESXi you could use something like this to back up the existing configuration, then restore it again (I've had to do that when completely swapping out the disks in our backup host with larger ones), if you don't want the hassle of setting up vSwitch configs again and etc. But upgrading between versions can cause problems with restoring the backed-up configuration sometimes, and ESX to ESXi is a completely different kettle of fish. I'd just note everything down and recreate the configs from scratch tbh - that's what I ended up doing when we switched over.
FN-GM Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 VCentre isn't supported on 2012 yet Is it not? Thought support came with 5.1. Good job im still on 2008 R2 Do you mean a brand new database and configuration as well? Also, have VMware now done away with the maximum of 32gb per host? Thats only for the free version. If your on VC you wont have that version. I would go for a clean install, no point faffing migrating. There is hardly any config in VC.
DrCheese Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 2012 is supported as a guest OS on 5.1, but not as the host for the VSphere management yet. Annoying, as I'm in the process of replacing ours and I'd rather do it as 2012...
techie08 Posted January 11, 2013 Author Posted January 11, 2013 2012 is supported as a guest OS on 5.1, but not as the host for the VSphere management yet. Annoying, as I'm in the process of replacing ours and I'd rather do it as 2012... Have you thought about usings VMware's pre built linux VCenter? I dont know if its better, the same or not as good as installing it on windows server.
Ephelyon Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 We use the pre-built one and it seems fine. Asks for quite a lot of memory but I don't know if that's the same on a Windows installation anyway.
Domino Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 There is hardly any config in VC. Well, that depends if you're using distributed vswitches, datastore clusters, DRS rules, Resource pools, EVC, etc, etc.... OP - you need to be sure you can recreate what's currently in place before blowing the DB away. I'd take a backup anyway.
techie08 Posted January 14, 2013 Author Posted January 14, 2013 when im creating the new vcenter server, would i have to take the existing one offline? I dont know if there would be a conflict between the new one and existing one.
Ephelyon Posted January 14, 2013 Posted January 14, 2013 Only if it's going to have the same IP/hostname. If it's going to manage the same servers, open vSphere Client for each server individually and disassociate it from the vCenter, then add them all back to the new one once it's up and running.
techie08 Posted January 14, 2013 Author Posted January 14, 2013 Only if it's going to have the same IP/hostname. If it's going to manage the same servers, open vSphere Client for each server individually and disassociate it from the vCenter, then add them all back to the new one once it's up and running. To be honest, im probably going to do a wipe and load on each Host (we are still using esx not esxi) So would the best route be: Install and config new Vcenter, Dissociate hosts from old vCenter, Add them to new vCenter, Migrate VMs off one host, Disassociate that host from new VCenter, new ESXi install on the host, Re-add host to new Vcenter.
Ephelyon Posted January 14, 2013 Posted January 14, 2013 Sounds about right, unless anyone else knows differently as I've only done this procedure between ESXi hosts before myself.
Netman Posted January 14, 2013 Posted January 14, 2013 To be honest, im probably going to do a wipe and load on each Host (we are still using esx not esxi) So would the best route be: Install and config new Vcenter, Dissociate hosts from old vCenter, Add them to new vCenter, Migrate VMs off one host, Disassociate that host from new VCenter, new ESXi install on the host, Re-add host to new Vcenter. Doesn't matter about esx - the upgrade is capable of upgrading your servers to esxi too - so just do vcenter first and then migrate off one host to stage and then remediate the upgrade with the upgrade manager baseline you've created and assigned. I did mine from 4.0 to 5.0 and it takes care of the esx to esxi issue for you. It's all in the upgrade instructions or readme somewhere - I recall reading it at the time.
techie08 Posted January 14, 2013 Author Posted January 14, 2013 Doesn't matter about esx - the upgrade is capable of upgrading your servers to esxi too - so just do vcenter first and then migrate off one host to stage and then remediate the upgrade with the upgrade manager baseline you've created and assigned. I did mine from 4.0 to 5.0 and it takes care of the esx to esxi issue for you. It's all in the upgrade instructions or readme somewhere - I recall reading it at the time. Is this with a fresh install of VCenter? Our current Vcenter is 2003 r2 so its not 64bit.
techie08 Posted January 15, 2013 Author Posted January 15, 2013 Ive just noticed that i cant use the data migration tool on 5.1 as it doesn't exist on the install disk, and reading the notes, i will have to install 5.0 first, migrate, and then upgrade to 5.1 Is that how everyone else has done it?
Tall_Paul Posted January 18, 2013 Posted January 18, 2013 I've just upgraded from 4.1 to 5.0 (avoided 5.1 for the moment due to a few issues I'd been reading about,). It took a lot longer than half a day! Here is what I did: Upgrade the VCenter server (this is quick - takes about half an hour). Upgrade each ESXi host. This wasn't quick, we have three so this involved putting each one into maintenance mode (so vmotioning off all the VM's on each host), rebooting and upgrading. Another side effect is you are supposed to disconnect the ESXi host from your SAN so you don't risk formatting any datastores. This took a loooong time due to our rubbish server racks! Upgrade VMFS on each of our datastores. The recommended way of doing this is to purge each datastore, and recreate it rather than just updating. Again, this took a looong time (a lot of storage VMotioning). Upgrade virtual tools on each VM (which requires a reboot). Upgrade the virtual hardware on each VM. The VM must be powered down to do this. Finally our VSphere Management Agent had to be recreated and linked back to our UPS. I didn't use Update Manager (though I will for the next upgrade) but the total time spent doing all the above was several days (and a lot had to be done out of hours too due to the VM reboots). It's simple enough, and well documented (I used this excellent guide) but don't underestimate the time required. 1
techie08 Posted January 18, 2013 Author Posted January 18, 2013 I'm just testing the vcenter upgrade to new server using the data migration tool which works to 5.0 when I then try and upgrade to 5.1 I get errors that relate to ssl Certs being out of date. When I look at the Certs they expired in 2010! I'm now trying to read up on how to resolve this issue. They don't make it easy!
techie08 Posted January 23, 2013 Author Posted January 23, 2013 Managed to upgrade successfully on a test vm to 5.1. However just found out that esxi 5.1 isn't supported on HP DL380 G5 servers! Great!
psydii Posted January 23, 2013 Posted January 23, 2013 Do you mean a brand new database and configuration as well? Also, have VMware now done away with the maximum of 32gb RAM per host? "VMware vSphere 5 licensing removes all restrictions on physical cores and physical RAM." http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf Though I suspect the edition most of us run has a two processor per host limit, in exchange for great pricing.
Tall_Paul Posted January 23, 2013 Posted January 23, 2013 I'm just testing the vcenter upgrade to new server using the data migration tool which works to 5.0 when I then try and upgrade to 5.1 I get errors that relate to ssl Certs being out of date. When I look at the Certs they expired in 2010! I'm now trying to read up on how to resolve this issue. They don't make it easy! I've been reading up on this as that's what I've got too. Apparently it has been done successfully but, as you say, isn't supported by HP or VMWare. Maybe, if you have the capacity, try it on one host and see how you get on?
techie08 Posted January 23, 2013 Author Posted January 23, 2013 I've been reading up on this as that's what I've got too. Apparently it has been done successfully but, as you say, isn't supported by HP or VMWare. Maybe, if you have the capacity, try it on one host and see how you get on? I did sort it out and now works but it sucks that 5.1 isnt on the DL380 G5 compatibility list!
Tall_Paul Posted January 23, 2013 Posted January 23, 2013 I did sort it out and now works but it sucks that 5.1 isnt on the DL380 G5 compatibility list! It is a pain. So you have successfully installed 5.1 on your DL380s then?
techie08 Posted January 23, 2013 Author Posted January 23, 2013 It is a pain. So you have successfully installed 5.1 on your DL380s then? No i didn't get that far!
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