Installation guide

The virtual machine upgrade process is different for ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0. In earlier versions, you upgraded
the virtual hardware upgrade before you upgraded VMware Tools. For ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0, you upgrade
VMware Tools before you upgrade the virtual hardware.
You can use either the vSphere Client or vCenter Update Manager to upgrade virtual machines. In a
clustered environment, VMware recommends that you use vCenter Update Manager . See the vCenter
Update Manager Administration Guide. If you are using the vSphere Client to upgrade virtual machines, see
Chapter 13, “Upgrading Virtual Machines,” on page 83.
2 Upgrade your product licenses:
a Either your new license keys are sent to you in email, or you get them using the license portal.
b Apply the new license keys to your assets using the vSphere Client (or vCenter Server if you have it).
You must perform these tasks for each ESX 2.5.x host and the virtual machines on the hosts.
Upgrading by Moving Virtual Machines Using Upgrade VMotion
This scenario is known as a migration upgrade that includes datastore migration. The migration upgrade is a
managed transition rather than a strict upgrade. By using VMotion to move virtual machines directly from
one datastore to another datastore, you minimize downtime of the virtual machines.
The following example provides a high-level overview of the upgrade process in an environment with ESX 2.5.x
and VirtualCenter 1.4.x, using upgrade VMotion to migrate your running virtual machines to ESX 4.0. The
hosts in your environment must be licensed for and able to use VMotion.
You can perform a migration upgrade without VMotion. The only difference is the amount of downtime for
the virtual machines.
Upgrade VMotion (also known as VMotion with datastore relocation) is a special case in which you perform
a one-way VMotion. In this scenario, you move virtual disks from a VMFS 2 volume to a VMFS 3 volume.
Requirements include persistent-mode disks, a VMFS 2 volume that is visible to the ESX 4.0 host, and
compatible host CPUs.
NOTE Upgrade VMotion is required if you have ESX 2.5.x hosts.
The disadvantage of a migration upgrade is that this plan requires additional resources. A migration upgrade
calls for sufficient resources to run the production environment partly on older hosts and partly on upgraded
hosts. Any required redundancies and safeguards must be available on both upgraded and non-upgraded
infrastructure during the transition.
Prerequisites
The requirements for upgrade VMotion are as follows:
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One or more machines meeting ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 requirements.
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Empty host storage sufficient to hold a portion of your production virtual machines. Ideally, the storage
should be large enough to hold all of the migrated virtual machines. A larger capacity for virtual machines
on this extra storage means fewer operations are required before all your virtual machines are migrated.
Before you begin this procedure, complete the following tasks:
1 Install vCenter Server 4.0. You cannot upgrade VirtualCenter 1.4.x to vCenter Server 4.0. You must perform
a fresh installation.
For the supported operating systems, database types, and other prerequisites, see the Compatibility
Matrixes and the Installation Guide on the VMware vSphere documentation Web site.
2 Install the vSphere Client 4.0.
vSphere Upgrade Guide
20 VMware, Inc.