Are you nervous about upgrading VMware ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4? I was too but I discovered with VMware's Host Update Utility, not only could a non-patched ESX 3.5 host get upgraded but the ability to rollback to ESX 3.5 with all the settings in tack was available. If all goes well, there are scripts to remove the ESX 3.5 files permanently from the host as well as scripts to remove vSphere 4 and roll back to ESX 3.5.
After a phone call to VMware technical support and three VMware engineers later, we determined that one vmnic (on each host) was not seeing the proper local traffic. For instance, if my traffic for the VMkernal was on 10.10.1.x, the associated vmnic was seeing 10.10.30.x. We believe that some cables were moved around to the wrong port on the switch but since our WAN engineers handle the switches, I did not have access to make the corrections. I am over-simplifying the issues that took several hours to resolve but be forewarned, check are your cabling and networking prior to upgrading.
This demo offers a side-by-side view of the host update utility and the ESX host as it is upgrading. NOTE: This demo concentrates on just the upgrade while a future upgrade will detail the rollback and clean-up steps.
Production versus Test
The video was recorded prior to executing this in production. I would love to say that everything went smoothly but it did not. The "upgrade" went fine but (host) VMotion did not work after the upgrade. The production environment was comprised of 2 ESX 3.5 hosts that utilized vMotion. The approach was to upgrade each host with a day or 2 in between for testing purposes. Unfortunately, after the first host was upgraded, VMotion did not work. Additionally, once I rolled back to ESX 3.5, vMotion would work again.After a phone call to VMware technical support and three VMware engineers later, we determined that one vmnic (on each host) was not seeing the proper local traffic. For instance, if my traffic for the VMkernal was on 10.10.1.x, the associated vmnic was seeing 10.10.30.x. We believe that some cables were moved around to the wrong port on the switch but since our WAN engineers handle the switches, I did not have access to make the corrections. I am over-simplifying the issues that took several hours to resolve but be forewarned, check are your cabling and networking prior to upgrading.
This demo offers a side-by-side view of the host update utility and the ESX host as it is upgrading. NOTE: This demo concentrates on just the upgrade while a future upgrade will detail the rollback and clean-up steps.
