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bgoeringFlag for United States of America

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How to upgrade from ESX 3.5 to ESXi 4.1 without having to manually reconfigure everything

I have been playing various upgrade scenarios in my lab and my home environment for a while now. All of these have been very simple, just a few vSwitchs, a NTP configuration, maybe an iSCSI target to configure, etc. That being the case my ESXi 4.1 has been a clean install and manual configuration that only takes a half hour or so.

Now I hope to complete the ESX to ESXi conversion in my main systems. These systems are a bit more complex than my lab and home system with many vnics, vSwitches, VLANs, FC HBAs, fault tolerent networking setups, and the list goes on. There are not a lot of servers, but manual configuration of each one could take hours and be error prone.

My question is how is the best way to get there withough having to manually reconfigure everything after a clean ESXi install. Is it possible to backup a ESX 3.5 configuration and restore it to ESXi 4.1 directly? If not could I backup an ESX 3.5, restore it to ESXi 3.5, then upgrade that? Maybe upgrade ESX 3.4 to ESX 4.1, then backup that and restore it to ESXi 4.1?

It seems to me that VMware is pushing us to move from ESX to ESXi by discontinuing the ESX product after this release, but they haven't appeared to make any tools available to facilitate such an effort.

Perhaps if I just keep the ESX architecture and do the normal upgrade process now, by the time 4.2 or 5.0 or whatever else is next comes out it will be easier.

Thoughts anyone?
Thanks,
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za_mkh
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Yes, this is something that is also bothering me.  But this is a good time to also start looking at the kixstart script for installing ESXi so that all the basic stuff like vswitches, uplinks, NTP, etc can be configured.

I will be looking at this when I have time ... but will be interested to see what comes up.
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Yeah, I have looked at th kickstart stuff, but my environment isn't really large enough in terms of host count to justify the effort to create it. We also can't afford the Enterprise Plus to use the host profiles - just configure one and apply it.

However, hmmmm - I just did the vCenter upgrade a couple weeks ago and it is still on the eval license, the fresh install will be on the eval license. Could do that I guess and then add my Enterprise standard licenses.

My thought so far is to just do ESX 3.5 to ESX 4.1 using Upgrade Manager, and hoping when VMware "forces" to ESXi they will provide the tools to do it.

Still looking for comments :)
Lol - post my experience back to my own question for archive purposes

Did find a couple articles:
http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/the-migration-from-esx-to-esxi-is-happening-moving-configurations.html

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/the-migration-from-esx-to-esxi-is-happening-moving-configurations-part-ii.html

Tried going the host profile route this evening. Created ESX 3.5, did some basic config, added a few vSwitches, NTP config, etc. Used update manager to upgrade to 4.1 - Upgrade went ok until reboot point, at which it never joined back to vCenter. Plus couldn't get rid of host in vCenter, no "remove" or even "connect" link. Ended up restarting vCenter service then removing. It may have timed out eventually.

Anyway - added back to vCenter fine, config changes were all there, so created a host profile from the upgraded ESX host.

Installed fresh ESXi 4.1, joined it to vCenter, attached the profile, ran compliance check. Lots of stuff to do as expected. Tried to apply the host profile and my experience mirrored the 2nd article posted above. ESXi still claimed (on console anyway) to have IP address I gave it, but can't ping, even after a reboot couldn't get in. Tech support mode was disabled so not persuing this path any further.
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coolsport00
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Yeah coolsport00, I like to check the configs every so often myself, but am counting on host profiles to force config compliance (next year, after we purchase the Enterprise Plus upgrade). We are a relatively small shop - less than a dozen ESX hosts (plus my personal ESXi at home) - so manual configuration isn't out of the question. It is just that there are so many touchpoints, and any manual process is error prone, and I don't really have enough hosts to justify spending time making a kickstart install. How is that for a run-on sentence.

I am pretty sure at this point I will be keeping ESX and doing the upgrade. I also like the COS but had thought that so long as we are going to be forced to ESXi I might as well get it over with.

Another concern is that I have seen other posts that some major vendors (QLogic for one) has no ESXi support for HBA firmware updates. Their solution is pop the card in a Windows or Linux box and flash it. I haven't verified that statement yet, but it is disturbing if true.

I will probably let this thread run through the weekend then split points amongst whoever offers an opinion.
Yeah...you are prone to make a config error for sure when doing manual reconfigs. I totally understand :)

I haven't seen anything on your QLogic concern. "za..", have you seen anything on that?

~coolsport00
This isn't exactly the thread I renmember seeing, but it is similar: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/211179. The thread I recall recounted QLogic support telling them to pull the cards and putting in a Windows box to flash.

here is another: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/208717
Interesting; since it's an older version of ESXi referred to in those threads, maybe it's rectified now? (hopefully anyway)

~coolsport00
Ok...well, I just (finally) heard back from support. For ESXi, you can back up the configs using vCLI (yuk). See pg. 39-40 of the vCLI Guide: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_vcli.pdf

For ESX 4.x, currently it's not possible...kind of. The only way you back up your configs is if you have Ent Plus licensing and use Host Profiles. Oh yay! :P

Regards,
~coolsport00
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Yeah...I actually have QLogic HBAs in my hosts and didn't have to flash them at all. Hmm...

~coolsport00
My SAN guy takes care of that too... I don't think its been upgraded since we installed this round of servers about two years ago. We only upgrade the firmware if we need to address an issue.

I will ask him next week what method he uses - stand alone boot cd I would bet.
Thanks guys, I ended up just doing the ESX upgrade and will look at ESXi at a later date