Installation guide

About vSphere Upgrade

vSphere Upgrade describes how to upgrade or migrate VMware

ESX™, ESXi™, and vCenter Server™ to

ESXi 5.0 and vCenter Server 5.0.

This content includes the following tasks:

Upgrade to vCenter Server 5.0 from vCenter Server 4.0.

Install vCenter Server 5.0 on a different machine and keep a VirtualCenter 2.5 or higher database. Do this

if you upgrade from a 32-bit server to a 64-bit server, for example.

Upgrade to ESXi 5.0 from ESXi 4.x or migrate to ESXi from ESX 4.x.

Upgrade VMware Tools and virtual hardware.

To learn how to simplify and automate your datacenter upgrade, see the vSphere Update Manager Installation

and Administration Guide.

If you have legacy versions of ESX, ESXi, and VirtualCenter, and you want to move to VMware vSphere™ 5.0

by performing fresh installations that do not preserve existing configurations, see the vSphere Installation and

Setup documentation.

Intended Audience

vSphere Upgrade is for anyone who needs to upgrade from earlier versions of ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server to

ESXi 5.0 and vCenter Server 5.0. These topics are for experienced Microsoft Windows or Linux system

administrators who are familiar with virtual machine technology and datacenter operations.

VMware, Inc.