ESX to ESXi

P

Private Citizen

Gawd
Joined
Mar 15, 2002
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I've been seeing some folks moving away from ESX to ESXi. Can you do a direct upgrade to ESXi from ESX without doing a reinstall (format HD and that whole process)? What benefits would someone get from upgrading to ESXi. One thing that I think is beneficial is the software patching tool for ESXi is much easier to use than that of ESX IMO.

Also is it true VMware is wanting to move away from ESX all together?
 
vSphere 4.1 is the last release of ESX. When the next version (4.2?) is released only ESXi will be available.

You cannot upgrade an existing server from ESX to ESXi. You have to reinstall.

The benefit of going to ESXi is that you no longer have a Service Console OS that is vulnerable to attack.

All you need to do is take a cluster of servers, put one in maintenance mode, power it down, reinstall with ESXi, configure, then add it back into your cluster. Do this for each server until they're all running ESXi. ESX and ESXi servers can run together in the same cluster as you do the reinstalls.

Before you upgrade anything to 4.1, make sure you upgrade your vCenter server to 4.1 first. It will need to be 64 bit.
 
Great info. Since I purchased ESX would my serial key be compatibile with ESXi or would I have to repurchase? We use the HA funtionality that isn't part of the free ESXi install.
 
your key should be transferrable, esx and esxi licenses should work as long as u use the same version.
 
Private Citizen said:
Great info. Since I purchased ESX would my serial key be compatibile with ESXi or would I have to repurchase? We use the HA funtionality that isn't part of the free ESXi install.
Click to expand...

Your licenses work for ESX and ESXi. You'll have the same functionality with ESXi that you did with ESX.
 
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