Need Advice: Update to esxi 5.0

DeChache

DeChache

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 30, 2005
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I have a single ESXi host in production I would like to upgrade to 5.0. I am struggling on the best way to do that. The best conclusion I have come to so far is to put 3tb worth of disk into a linux system I have and scp all the vms over to that box do the upgrade and then scp back. Is there any kind of major flaw in this plan. I hope to start this process tomorrow. I have about 2tb worth of vms to move.

The my host is a single Dell Poweredge 2950 III with 2 E5430 Xeons with 32 gig of ram 6 750 gig near line sas drives in Raid 5 on a perc 6i running ESXi 4.1 update 2(I think i need to check)

Any advice on this matter before I venture forth would be much appreciated.
 
Why would you move the VMs? You can upgrade the host to ESXi 5.0 and it won't mess with your VMFS volume. You can also upgrade VMFS to v5 on the fly even while the VMs are running.
 
I won't lie I'm funny I prefer to do clean installs of everything
 
Get a trial version of VEEAM and take backups of all your VM's to an external hard drive or NAS, install ESXi 5.0, restore your VM's from backup.
 
Then go grab Veeam's FastSCP to move off your VMs, re-install ESXi 5 on the host, configure it, and move the VMs back. Simple. It will just take a long time to move 2TB worth of VMs.

You can still choose to install a fresh copy of ESXi 5 but leave the VMFS datastore intact. Then upgrade VMFS 3 to 5 and you're ready to go without needing to move any VMs.
 
Last edited:
Child of Wonder said:
Then go grab Veeam's FastSCP to move off your VMs, re-install ESXi 5 on the host, configure it, and move the VMs back. Simple. It will just take a long time to move 2TB worth of VMs.

You can still choose to install a fresh copy of ESXi 5 but leave the VMFS datastore intact. Then upgrade VMFS 3 to 5 and you're ready to go without needing to move any VMs.
Click to expand...

Backing up my VMs now. Gonna do a fresh install leave my datastores intact and hope everything boots right up

Thanks for the help
 
DeChache said:
Backing up my VMs now. Gonna do a fresh install leave my datastores intact and hope everything boots right up

Thanks for the help
Click to expand...

Post how long it takes you to transfer them off if you are using FastSCP, or are you using Veeam? I had a similar problem recently and it was taking 24+ hours to transfer 2 300GB VM's on a gigabit network. It was driving me nuts (via FastSCP).
 
That's because SCP is slow as shit on ESXi. No service console, no vmkernel datamover for the service :)

Use "export as OVF template" - it'll be faster, and way safer.
 
I've often thought of using ovf export, but doesn't the data have to be copied multiple times? e.g. first it goes to my windows workstation where the vsphere client is running, then I have to move it to the final destination? Or is there a better way for me?
 
You should be able to export to any location the client machine can reach. :)
 
Yeah, I get that. My point was: let's say I mount a share elsewhere on my W7 box. I do an export. The ovf will go from vsphere => W7 => final location. e.g. an unnecessary copy. Maybe unavoidable - just wanted to make sure.
 
Ah, no, it exports directly to the location specified, so if it's a share mounted on your system, it should (IIRC) copy directly there - I'll double check that though, I've never paid attention too much.
 
lopoetve said:
Ah, no, it exports directly to the location specified, so if it's a share mounted on your system, it should (IIRC) copy directly there - I'll double check that though, I've never paid attention too much.
Click to expand...


Don't you need a Vcenter server to do an OVF export?

My 500 gig VMs took about 3 hours to move with fastSCP ~40-50 meg a second not bad at all all things considered. So far my VMs seem just fine. One of these days I hope I have the budget for the essentials pack.
 
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