Specifications

Table 7‑4. Supported Scenarios for Upgrade or Migration to 5.5.x. (Continued)
Scenario for Upgrade or Migration to 5.5.x Support
4.x ESX or ESXi host, interactive migration or upgrade Supported. See “Upgrade or Migrate Hosts Interactively,”
on page 180.
The installer wizard offers the choice to upgrade or
perform a fresh installation. If you upgrade, ESX partitions
and configuration files are converted to be compatible with
ESXi.
4.x ESX or ESXi host, scripted upgrade Supported. See “Installing, Upgrading, or Migrating Hosts
Using a Script,” on page 182.
In the upgrade script, specify the particular disk to
upgrade on the system. If the system cannot be upgraded
correctly because the partition table is incompatible, the
installer displays a warning and does not proceed. In this
case, perform a fresh installation. Upgrading or migration
is possible only if there is at most one VMFS partition on
the disk that is being upgraded and the VMFS partition
must start after sector 1843200.
4.x ESX host on a SAN or SSD Partially supported.
You can upgrade the host as you would a normal ESX 4.x
host, but no provisions will be made to optimize the
partitions on the disk. To optimize the partition scheme on
the host, perform a fresh installation.
4.x ESX host, missing Service Console .vmdk file,
interactive migration from CD or DVD, scripted migration,
or migration with vSphere Update Manager
Not supported.
The most likely reasons for a missing Service Console are
that the Service Console is corrupted or that the VMFS
volume is not available, which can occur if the VMFS was
installed on a SAN and the LUN is not accessible. In this
case, on the disk selection screen of the installer wizard, if
you select a disk that has an existing ESX 4.x installation,
the wizard prompts you to perform a clean installation.
4.x ESX or ESXi host, asynchronously released driver or
other third-party customizations, interactive migration
from CD or DVD, scripted migration, or migration with
vSphere Update Manager
Supported with ESXi Image Builder CLI.
If a 4.x host contains customizations, such as third-party
VIBS or drivers, upgrading with the standard VMware
installer ISO will result in the loss of those customizations,
and possibly an unstable system. See “Upgrading Hosts
That Have Third-Party Custom VIBs,” on page 151. You
can ESXi Image Builder CLI to create a customized ESXi
installer ISO file that includes the VIBs or drivers. See the
information on Image Builder in the vSphere Installation and
Setup documentation.
5.0.x or 5.1.x ESXi host, asynchronously released driver or
other third-party customizations, interactive upgrade from
CD or DVD, scripted upgrade, or upgrade with vSphere
Update Manager
Supported.
When you upgrade an ESXi 5.0.x or 5.1.x host that has
custom VIBs to version 5.5, the custom VIBs are migrated.
See “Upgrading Hosts That Have Third-Party Custom
VIBs,” on page 151.
5.0.x ESXi host Methods supported for direct upgrade to 5.5.x are:
n
vSphere Update Manager.
n
Interactive upgrade from CD, DVD, or USB drive.
n
Scripted upgrade.
n
Auto Deploy. If the ESXi 5.0.x host was deployed using
Auto Deploy, you can use Auto Deploy to reprovision
the host with an 5.5.x image.
n
esxcli.
Chapter 7 Upgrading and Migrating Your Hosts
VMware, Inc. 153