VMware ESX 4.0 - UPGRADE GUIDE UPDATE 1 Update Manual page 19

Prerequisites
The requirements for a migration upgrade with VMotion are as follows:
One or more machines meeting ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 requirements.
n
Empty host storage sufficient to hold a portion of your production virtual machines. Ideally, the storage
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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 Upgrade VirtualCenter 2.x to vCenter Server 4.0.
a Make sure your database is compatible with vCenter Server 4.0. This release discontinues support for
some database versions and adds support for other database versions. See the Compatibility Matrixes
on the VMware vSphere documentation Web site.
b Make sure that you have the required permissions to perform this procedure. See
Prerequisites,"
c Take a full backup of the VirtualCenter 2.x database. See your database documentation.
d Back up the VirtualCenter 2.x SSL certificates. See
The downtime required for this upgrade is based on the amount of data in the database. During this time,
you cannot perform provisioning operations, such as cloning or creating virtual machines. The upgrade
from VirtualCenter 2.5 is faster in comparison to the upgrade from VirtualCenter 2.0.x because of
differences in changes to the database schema and the amount of data migration.
After the upgrade, the ESX hosts are automatically reconnected to vCenter Server 4.0. Your VMware High
Availability (HA) and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) clusters are automatically
reconfigured. (Check to ensure that the automatic reconfiguration is successful. In some cases, you might
need to reconfigure the clusters manually.)
For a detailed description of the upgrade procedure, see
Server," on page 39 and
2 Run the vCenter Agent Preupgrade Check tool.
3 Install the vSphere Client.
You can install the vSphere Client on the same machine with your previous version of the VI Client. You
must have the previous version of the VI Client to connect to previous versions of VirtualCenter and ESX/
ESXi.
For a detailed description of the procedure, see
4 If your environment has vCenter Converter, upgrade it to the latest version.
5 If your environment has vCenter Guided Consolidation, complete the consolidation plan and then
upgrade it to the latest version.
6 If your environment has vCenter Update Manager, upgrade it to the latest version.
Procedure
1 Use VMotion to evacuate the virtual machines from the ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 hosts.
2 Upgrade to ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0, or perform a fresh installation of ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0.
3 Add the ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 host to vCenter Server.
For VMotion to work, the ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 and ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 hosts must be managed by the same
vCenter Server instance.
4 Use VMotion to move virtual machine to the ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 host.
VMware, Inc.
on page 41.
Chapter 6, "Upgrading to vCenter Server 4.0,"
Chapter 2 Example Upgrade Scenarios
"Back Up VirtualCenter 2.x,"
Chapter 5, "Preparing for the Upgrade to vCenter
on page 49.
"Upgrade to the vSphere Client,"
"Database
on page 45.
on page 60.
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