The day had arrived.
After many marketing documents, press releases, and speculative forum posts, we were all waiting with baited breath to see just how VMware could make one of the most revolutionary products to ever hit the market even better.
I attended the vSphere 4 launch tour. I watched the powerpoint slides scroll through with all of the piles of new features. I was sold. I researched a bit, and couldn't find any articles negating the ability to upgrade. Asked all my questions beforehand...
"Can ESX 3.x and 4 hosts co-exist in the same cluster?"
"Is there anything retroactive about running a non-upgraded-VM on a ESX4 host?"
"Can I still join ESX4 hosts to VirtualCenter 2.5?"
This accurately defined my upgrade path, and this is basically a synopsis of how that process went down. There were some surprises, but none of them were bad.
Step 1. Upgrade VirtualCenter 2.5.x to vCenter 4.0
"Wait...what?" This shocked me a bit at first, because the answers I got from the launch tour told me that I could join ESX4 hosts to VirtualCenter 2.5! Why do I need to upgrade VC to vCenter4 first?
And then the golden nugget was dropped on me.
It just so happened that we had coincidentally just purchased an additional host to add to the cluster. I had waited to do the install so that I could truly test the whole "adding an ESX4 host to VC 2.5" thing.
Clean install went flawlessly. Things to note: You can now preload custom drivers DURING the install. Got a weird NIC or HBA? Oddball SCSI card? Here's your chance. No need to go in post-install and do your configuring there. You can do it before the installer launches into loading packages. COOL! Other than that, it was just like installing any of the other versions, aside from a few graphics changes.
First host install complete. Once it's loaded, I connect to it directly via the VIC, to do some simple configuring.
ROADBLOCK!
New client install time! The first time you connect to ESX4 or vCenter4, you're prompted to install the new client. Schnazzy new dashboard, and I see the potential here for lots of vCenter plugins. (more on that in another post)
Client updated, onward! Connect to the host, configure my storage and networking to be identical to the other hosts in the cluster. Easy-peezy, no problems there. Right-click on the cluster, add host, go through the motions, and in a matter of minutes, I now have an HA/DRS-activated ESX4 host in my VC 2.5/ESX3.5.x cluster. Flawless.
WOW! This is great! So I kick one of the 3.5 hosts in Maintenance Mode, go to lunch while the VM's migrate off, come back and pop in the ESX cd. Boot up....
"Existing ESX hosts can no longer be upgraded via this method. Please upgrade through vCenter."
Hmm...a bit of a quick digging made me realize that there was not a choice in upgrade paths anymore. So I read back over the upgrade documentation once again. AHHHHH! So THIS is why they want you to upgrade VC to vCenter4 first!
Apparently, one of the big changes in vCenter4 was making Update Manager NOT USELESS! "Alright....let's give this thing a shot."
So, ditching the idea of upgrading hosts for the moment, I switched gears over to VC. Downloaded the .zip pack and copied them to my existing VC server (which is also a VM). Ran the executable, it found my existing VC installation. Great! Then the prompts about the database come up. So I put in my db user/pass, and the name of the database, ERROR! Ut oh. It prompts me that the vc user must have full 'sa' rights to the MSDB database. I was confused for a bit because I didn't read the fine print closely enough. I thought it was referring to my actual VC database. So, I double-checked that the vc user had owner privs to the VC database, went back and tried again. ERROR! It took me a couple of tries to realize I wasn't paying enough attention, and that it said 'MSDB' database, and not my actual 'VC' database.
Problem solved, moving on. Upgraders, just make sure you're doing the MSDB when you upgrade to vCenter, not your actual VC database.
Licked that, install finished fine, and IIRC, it prompted me to remove the old model licensing server. Note, if you're upgrading all of your vCenter and hosts to v4, there's no need to keep it, but it will not interfere with anything. v4 doesn't even reference it, and it's good to have around in case you need to do something in 3.5 (i.e. test/dev environments, perhaps?)
Restarted the VC VM (sorry, "vCenter" now. Did Steve Jobs start working for VMware under the table? vCenter/vSphere...) and connected to it. Nice dashboard! I like it! Love the new licensing model as well. I went straight to the licensing site (licensing.vmware.com) and consolidated all of my individual licenses into ONE KEY! This was amazing! Gone are the days of managing dozens of license keys! And it actually WORKS now! Also, little did I know, but VMware had also already upgraded my license keys to be vSphere4 keys.
So, VC is upgraded to vCenter 4. Licenses have been properly allocated across all hosts with ONE key, and we're ready to rock.
In my next writeup, I'll go over upgrading your individual hosts.
-Nick