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Vmware Upgrade questions

V

videodrone83

Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2006
Messages
527
I've been reading the upgrade best practices and other websites and just wanted to re confirm if my idea for upgrading will be fine. I have done new installs for vmware but have never performed an upgrade.

Our current setup we are running vmware 4.0 with 3 hosts with vcenter and we are using Dell EQL's for our SAN.

2 of the hosts work fine and can be accessed fine, the 3rd host was setup before by predecessor and there was no documentation on it so I cannot get root access on it without reinstalling or trying their reset pw docs on vm site.

we currently have 3 dell PE 610's and also plan on purchasing a new EQL SAN and dell PE 620. As far as networking our SAN's are on separate network as well as the management.

Would it be best to install the new PE on 5.0 and create a new vcenter vm on that host and connect it to the sql on existing vcenter box? and then migrate the sql database afterwards? our vcenter vm runs on server 2003 and really want to phase that out with Server 2008.

After that I was going to do an image backup of 1 host and migrate the VM's over to another host and continue with the install via CD for upgrading and do the same for the other 2 hosts. My 2nd question is vmfs partitioning, has anyone done in place upgrade from vmfs3 to 5 or did you just migrate the data to another store and move it back afterwards?
 
1. Install net new vCenter and SQL ( or use the vCSA) on new Host connected to new SAN
2. Add old hosts into new vCenter
3. One host at at timem evacuate, remove from cluster/vcenter, install new ESXi and configure and add it back into the cluster.
4. Do this until all Hosts are upgraded
5. Create new VMFS5 datastores on New SAN for VM workloads
6. Storage vMotion VM's to new Datastores
7. Upgrade Virtual Hardware to latest
8. Upgrade VMware tools
9. Clean up old datastores..

Don't worry about migrating or retaining info from SQL for old vCenter...just stand up a new one. I personally like the appliance and have several rolled out to customers with zero issues. Also..the storage vMotion to new VMFS5 datastores is preferred to maintain standard block size.

If you plan to reuse the storage you have just add the new SAN to the current group. Make sure you have updated the firmware on your SAN as well as obtain the latest MEM from EqualLogic, SAN HQ etc.
 
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Should the firmware be updated on the SAN before doing any of this. we currently use 2 PS4000 models and plan to buy a PS4100 model
 
I would do the firmware on current prior to installing the new array. Then prior to installing the new array, bring that to the current as the other two, bring it in the group.

Unless you need capacity to create the new datastores for VMFS5 to migrate too, then no.

Keep in mind you have to check compatibility for all the components. EQL can be a bit funky around that pending your current firmware versions.
 
just reading other posts on issues and wasn't sure if it was best to go straight to 5.5 or just stop at 5.1 for now, in case there are any issues still being worked out like MS products :) I usually wait till a service pack comes out before rolling anything out
 
U1 is out for 5.5. We are not rolling that out to customers yet but we are rolling out 5.5. Haven't done an upgrade from 4.0 but several from 4.1 to 5.5. In reality, I really don't do upgrades majority of the time, it's fresh install vCenter, bring in older hosts, evacuate, fresh install ESXi.

Another thing I forgot to mention is make sure that your server BIOS is updated as well. I have seen issues with Dell servers with older BIOS versions.
 
I wouldn't go from 5 to 5.1 to 5.5 unless you want it to be an absolute pain in your ass. If possible, I'd just set up a brand new vcenter 5.5 and just do fresh ESXi 5.5 installs.

If you're going to 5.5 make sure you're NOT using e1000 nics on your guests.
 
Uh oh. I upgraded the two-host lab from 5.1 to 5.5. I'm pretty sure I am using e1000 everywhere. Haven't seen any problems yet though. What is the issue?
 
We got hit with that e1000 issue last week, windows 2012r2 seems to trigger it quite frequently.
 
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