jarce wrote:
Hi all
I´m kind of new in the vmware world, a client is asking me to do an upgrade of their vcenter 5.0 to 5.1, the actual vcenter is a virtual machine, and the database in a physical server, so the objective is to delete the vcenter VM, and install a new vcenter in the same physical server were the SQL is hosted.
so, the questions are:
- Can I just install the new 5.1 vcenter and link it to the existing SQL instance, without loosing the information of the DB?
- Is some way to bkp all the vcenter configurations and restore them into the new vcenter?
- Does this upgrade involves any kind of outage, because there are some dvswitch and vswitch, and I´m afraid that they loose the connection during the upgrade.
thanks all for the help!!!
If keeping the existing configuration and stats is a requirement, I think I would first install the vCenter Server 5.0 bits to the existing SQL server that you mentioned, and use the database during the install (Of course, you'd need to turn off the old vCenter Server first). You would need to create the ODBC DSN on the physical server, so the vCenter installer can see it. There will be an option to leave the database intact. You would also need to copy over anything that might not be part of the database configuration. The sysprep files located in C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep would be an example, if your client uses Customization Specifications.
Once you have confirmed that everything is working, then upgrade in-place to vSphere 5.1. vCenter 5.1 has increased complexity in the way it is implemented, so you really want to make sure your environment is in good shape before you upgrade.
I think I would move vCenter before executing the upgrade, rather than upgrade vCenter before moving it, due to the increased complexity with 5.1.