This scenario is known as a cold migration upgrade. When you use cold migration to move virtual machines from one host to another host, additional downtime is required for the virtual machines.
The requirements for a cold migration upgrade are as follows:
Before you begin this procedure, complete the following tasks:
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Upgrade VirtualCenter 2.x to vCenter Server 4.0.
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 Preparing for the Upgrade to vCenter Server and Upgrading to vCenter Server 4.0. | ||||||||
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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 Upgrade to the vSphere Client. | ||||||||
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If your environment has vCenter Converter, upgrade it to the latest version. | ||||||||
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If your environment has vCenter Guided Consolidation, complete the consolidation plan and then upgrade it to the latest version. | ||||||||
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If your environment has vCenter Update Manager, upgrade it to the latest version. |
1 |
Upgrade your virtual machines: The virtual machine upgrade process is different for ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0. In earlier versions, you upgraded the virtual hardware upgrade before you upgraded VMware Tools. For ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0, you upgrade VMware Tools before you upgrade the virtual hardware. You can use either the vSphere Client or vCenter Update Manager to upgrade virtual machines. In a clustered environment, VMware recommends that you use vCenter Update Manager . See the vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide. If you are using the vSphere Client to upgrade virtual machines, see Upgrading Virtual Machines. |
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Upgrade your product licenses: |
You must perform these tasks for each ESX 2.5.x host and the virtual machines on the hosts.