vCenter 5.1 Upgrade

Discussion in 'VMware Certifications' started by craigie, Nov 7, 2012.

  1. craigie

    craigie Terabyte Poster

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    I have been meaning to perform a vCenter 5.1 upgrade for some time now. The good news is, I have a few space minutes to get the vmFocus lab upgraded.

    First of all, you need to decide on how you are going to upgrade, are you going to perform:

    In Place Upgrade this is where you install straight over the existing vCenter, this is supported for 64 bit systems on vCenter 4.0 and 5.0

    New Install this is where you install a new vCenter 5.1 server and then add you hosts to it.

    I’m going to go for a new install, as my existing vCenter 5.0 server has taken some battering, with SRM being added on and taken off numerous times.

    vCenter 5.1 has much higher resource requirements, so it might be worth a quick flirt past the Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.1 Best Practices KB to make sure your environment is up to scratch.

    One thing that is worth mentioned is your DNS entries, I suggest you make sure these are spot on. In my environment I have a Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Integrated Forward Lookup and Reverse Lookup Zone for vmfocus.local

    I have DNS records for the following entries, both forward and reverse:

    ESXi01 192.168.37.1
    ESXi02 192.168.37.2
    ESXi03 192.168.37.3
    VMF-APP01 192.168.37.205

    You probably guessed that ESXi01, ESXi02 and ESXi03 are all vSphere Hosts and VMF-APP01 is a Windows 2008 R2 Standard Server. Before this upgrade all of the vSphere Hosts are attached to another vCenter called VMF-ADMIN01.

    What I really like about vCenter is you can install another instance and then just attach the hosts to the new vCenter. You do loose historical performance data, but if you have a baseline already, that’s not such a big issue.

    OK then let’s crack on.

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    Certifications: CCA | CCENT | CCNA | CCNA:S | HP APC | HP ASE | ITILv3 | MCP | MCDST | MCITP: EA | MCTS:Vista | MCTS:Exch '07 | MCSA 2003 | MCSA:M 2003 | MCSA 2008 | MCSE | VCP5-DT | VCP4-DCV | VCP5-DCV | VCAP5-DCA | VCAP5-DCD | VMTSP | VTSP 4 | VTSP 5
  2. Mikeyboy

    Mikeyboy Kilobyte Poster

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    Nice write up, I had a few nightmare setups with my vcenter 5.0 - 5.1 upgrades, and I'm not alone from numerous posts I've read around the net! Ended up having to remove and reinstall several times.. first time it actually all worked fine, but minor changes I made seemed to break it (can't remember what exactly). You opted for the simple install, but some have recommended going thru each bit step by step, as it does one install slightly differently, asking you to install a certificate, and there had been a few ssl cert-related errors popping up... I got so fed up in the end I ended up installing full SQL and setting up from scratch using a back up of my vcenter database...
    Apparently an update was going to be released to try and cut out some of these bugs, not sure if its arrived yet though...
     
    Certifications: VCP,MCSA, MCP, MCDST, MCITP, MCTS, A+, N+
  3. craigie

    craigie Terabyte Poster

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    Thats right, a few issues have been addressed, you need to install vCenter 5.1.0a.
     
    Certifications: CCA | CCENT | CCNA | CCNA:S | HP APC | HP ASE | ITILv3 | MCP | MCDST | MCITP: EA | MCTS:Vista | MCTS:Exch '07 | MCSA 2003 | MCSA:M 2003 | MCSA 2008 | MCSE | VCP5-DT | VCP4-DCV | VCP5-DCV | VCAP5-DCA | VCAP5-DCD | VMTSP | VTSP 4 | VTSP 5

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