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Reading Time: 2 minutesAs written in the previous post, the VM upgrade (after a vSphere upgrade) require first the upgrade of the VMware Tools and then (if needed) the upgrade of virtual hardware. But there are also more considerations to do. Some days ago, I was involved in a upgrade path a little unusual: from VI 3.5 (and also quite old, only U2) to vSphere 5. For hosts and vCenter Server was simple: just a re-installation and re-configuration. But there where more issues  in the VMs upgrade. Here some of my considerations: Seems obvious, but a VM check […]

Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a vSphere 5 upgrade path, the vSphere part of the upgrade process is the simples part and the order is the same of previous upgrade: first the vCenter Server (that can handle new and old hosts), then VUM (if you want to use it to upgrade the hosts), then the hosts, then the VMware Tools of the VMs and finally, if needed the VMFS5 of the datastores and the virtual hardware of the VMs. vCenter Server The upgrade of the vCenter Server is really simple and if you start from a version 4.1 you […]

Reading Time: 2 minutesIn the previous post I’ve written about the upgrade of vSphere and View in the vSphere 5 scenario, but there are also other scenario to consider with a View environment. For example, recently a new version of vSphere 4.1 has been released (the Update 2 version) and probably most vSphere 4.1 administrator will apply this set of patches. But what will happen with an existing View infrastructure? Both View 4.6 and 5.0 were released before this patch. We have see the a major upgrade may broke the View functionality, but a minor upgrade? Usually the […]

Reading Time: 3 minutesAs written in the previous post, vSphere 5 is not compatible with the View versions prior the 5.0. So to upgrade a vSphere environment from 4.x to 5.0, that also include a View 4.5 or 4.6 implementation, a good approach is first update View to version 5.0 (that it is compatible with vSphere 4.0 Update 3 and vSphere 4.1 Update 1). The upgrade procedure is well described in the VMware View Upgrade Guide, that include also the “VMware View Component Compatibility Matrix” useful to define the order of the components upgrade: From the previous table […]

Reading Time: 3 minutesAs written in the previous post, the HCL check is a mandatory step in each major upgrade (and of course also in each new implementation). And one of the aspect to verify is the firmware version that must match the minimum required for the particular version of vSphere: BIOS of physical servers: my recommendation is use always the latest stable version. The issues with old and unsupported (from vSphere) versions could be really hard to identify and troubleshoot… for example on a old IBM server with an unsupported firmware, there was a really strange and […]

Reading Time: 3 minutesThe upgrade path to vSphere 5 is well described in the specific guide (vSphere Upgrade Guide) and in the vSphere Upgrade Best Practices white paper.. In some cases an in-place upgrade can be applied with the advantage to require less time and to keep all (or most) of the settings and configurations. For example, a vCenter Server 4.1 can be updated to the 5.0 version (the requirements of the two versions are quite the same) or an old ESXi can be updated to ESXi 5. But in most cases, also when the in-place upgrade is […]

Reading Time: 2 minutesMike Laverick has started something of a petition to bring back the VMTN Subscription option: I would like to see VMware re-instate the “VMTN Subscription”. You might ask, what the hell is that? That would be fair enough because it was withdrawn many years ago, and never re-instated by VMware. The VMTN Subscription was similar to Microsoft MSDN or TechNet – where for relatively small yearly fee you could download the core enterprise software and run it for 1year. Right now there is whole legion of home-labbers out there that have to make do and […]

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