Upgrade To Esx 4.0 Or Esxi 4.0; Upgrade Esx Hosts - VMware ESX 4.0 - UPGRADE GUIDE UPDATE 1 Update Manual

Upgrade to ESX 4.0 or ESXi 4.0

The upgrade procedures differ for ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0.
C You must upgrade to vCenter Server before you upgrade ESX/ESXi. If you do not upgrade in the
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correct order, you can lose data and lose access to your servers.
This chapter includes the following topics:

"Upgrade ESX Hosts,"

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"Upgrade ESXi Hosts,"
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Upgrade ESX Hosts
You can use vSphere Host Update Utility to upgrade ESX 3.x hosts to ESX 4.x.
vSphere Host Update Utility is meant for small deployments in which a host is being managed by a single
administrator. For example, the following scenario is not supported: Admin 1 starts to upgrade host1 using
vSphere Host Update Utility. Admin 2 starts the vSphere Host Update Utility, detects that host1 is running
ESX 3.5, and tries to upgrade the host. The vSphere Host Update Utility does not report that an upgrade is
already in progress.
VMware supports and recommends that you perform one upgrade at a time when you use vSphere Host
Update Utility. If you do upgrade multiple hosts simultaneously and the upgrade fails for one of the hosts,
you must close and restart vSphere Host Update Utility to retry the upgrade on the host that failed. In this
case, you must wait until the upgrade for all the hosts is complete before you restart the utility. For simplicity,
it is best practice to upgrade one host at a time.
I For large deployments and for environments with clustered hosts, VMware recommends that you
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use vCenter Update Manager instead of vSphere Host Update Utility. See the vCenter Update Manager
Administration Guide.
When you upgrade a host, no third-party management agents or third-party software applications are
migrated to the ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 host.
Prerequisites
Prepare the host before you upgrade it.
See "ESX Hardware Requirements,"
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on page 31.
Make sure you are logged in to an account that has administrator permissions on your computer.
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VMware, Inc.
on page 79
on page 81
on page 29 and "Recommendations for Enhanced ESX Performance,"
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