Installation guide
Evaluation Period Countdown
The ESX/ESXi 60-day evaluation period begins to count down immediately after the first time you power on
the ESX/ESXi machine.
The 60-day evaluation count down starts even if the host is licensed and you are not using evaluation mode.
For example, suppose you decide 10 days after the first power-on to switch from licensed mode to evaluation
mode. Only 50 days remain of the evaluation period. Sixty days after the first power-on, it is too late to switch
to evaluation mode because zero days remain of the evaluation period. During the evaluation period, if you
switch the ESX/ESXi machine from evaluation mode to licensed mode, the evaluation timer does not stop
counting down.
To prevent losing the availability of the evaluation mode, VMware recommends that before (or shortly after)
you power on your ESX/ESXi machine for the first time, decide whether you want to use evaluation mode.
One advantage of using evaluation mode is that it offers full feature functionality, which lets you try features
that you might not have yet without paying additional license costs.
Clean Up the ESX Bootloader Menu After Upgrade
After you determine that the ESX 4.1 upgrade is stable, you can remove the ESX 3.5 boot option from the ESX 4.1
bootloader menu to disable the ability to roll back to ESX 3.5.
After you upgrade a host from ESX 3.5 to ESX 4.1, the ESX bootloader boots into ESX 4.1 by default, but retains
the option to boot into ESX 3.5. The ESX 3.5 boot option is useful if the ESX 4.1 upgrade does not work as
expected in your environment. However, after you confirm that the upgrade is stable, you might want to
disable the ability to roll back to ESX 3.5.
This procedure is applicable only if you left the default rollback option enabled when you performed the
upgrade. If you deselected the rollback option, this procedure is not applicable. Only a system administrator
can perform this optional procedure.
Prerequisites
Before executing this script, make sure that you have copied all required data from the legacy ESX mount
points under /esx3-installation.
Procedure
1 In the ESX 4.1 service console, run the cleanup-esx3 command with the optional -f (force) flag.
If you omit the -f flag, the software prompts you to confirm that you want to disable the ability to roll
back to the ESX 3.5.
2 (Optional) Reboot the host.
While the server is powering on, observe that the bootloader menu does not include an option for ESX
3.5.
The host looks the same as a clean installation of ESX 4.1. The cleanup-esx3 script removes the following files
and references from the ESX 4.1 host:
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ESX 3.5 references in the /etc/fstab directory
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ESX 3.5 boot files in the /boot directory
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The rollback-to-esx3 script in the /usr/sbin/ directory
Chapter 10 Postupgrade Considerations for Hosts
VMware, Inc. 69