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Ok, that's what I was afraid of. I did find a HOW TO article by hanccocka regarding 'live migration' of vms to different hosts using Veeams free tools. So I will look into possibly using that to migrate VMs prior to upgrading.<br />
<br />
Thank you for the prompt response and answer to my question!
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Hello All,<br />
<br />
I've been scouring the vmware website and kb articles for a best practice to upgrade multiple ESXi Host servers to the latest version.<br />
<br />
Currently our environment hosts 1 ESXi 4.1 server and 2 ESXi 5.0 servers. All three host live production servers and vMotion is <b>not</b> installed/enabled (each VM is stored locally on each host).<br />
<br />
Is it possible to perform the upgrade on a live server without downtime to the VMs? If not, what is the best method to minimize downtime during an upgrade?
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Hello All,

I've been scouring the vmware website and kb articles for a best practice to upgrade multiple ESXi Host servers to the latest version.

Currently our environment hosts 1 ESXi 4.1 server and 2 ESXi 5.0 servers. All three host live production servers and vMotion is not installed/enabled (each VM is stored locally on each host).

Is it possible to perform the upgrade on a live server without downtime to the VMs? If not, what is the best method to minimize downtime during an upgrade?

Ok, that&#39;s what I was afraid of. I did find a HOW TO article by hanccocka regarding &#39;live migration&#39; of vms to different hosts using Veeams free tools. So I will look into possibly using that to migrate VMs prior to upgrading.

Thank you for the prompt response and answer to my question!

Upgrade ESXi from 4.1 to 5.1

Hello All,

I&#39;ve been scouring the vmware website and kb articles for a best practice to upgrade multiple ESXi Host servers to the latest version.

Currently our environment hosts 1 ESXi 4.1 server and 2 ESXi 5.0 servers. All three host live production servers and vMotion is not installed/enabled (each VM is stored locally on each host).

Is it possible to perform the upgrade on a live server without downtime to the VMs? If not, what is the best method to minimize downtime during an upgrade?

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Virtualization is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, including (but not limited to) a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Virtualization is usually the creation of a system that executes separate from the underlying hardware resources, or the creation of an entire desktop for systems located elsewhere, similar to thin clients.