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Upgrading VMs to vSphere 5 with Update Manager – Upgrade VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware Upgrade

To continue our migration to vSphere 5, once we already have the VMware vCenter server on the version 5, we have updated to VMware Update Manager 5 and all our ESXi hosts are already running the ESXi hypervisor 5, we will be able to upgrade the VMware Tools to the virtual machines as well as then upgrade the virtual hardware version of the version 4 or 7 to the version 8. We can do it manually VM by VM or automate it with Update Manager and update it in our environment in an orderly manner.

Actualización de un host ESXi 4.x a ESXi 5 with Update Manager

This will be the process of upgrading our hosts to the new VMware vSphere environment 5, we will be able to migrate ESX hosts 3.5, ESX 4.0 and ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0 and upgrade from ESXi 3.5, ESXi 4.0 and ESXi 4.1 to ESXi 5 automatically, ordered and managed; distributing the ESXi base image 5 on any of them keeping their settings. To do this, we will have to rely on VMware Update Manager, This document shows the steps we will need to update our hosts to the latest version.

Installing and Configuring VMware vSphere Update Manager Download Services

If you have a vCenter Update Manager server and it does not have Internet access (for whatever reason: Safety Issues…) to download the security patches of our vSphere environment we can use an intermediary server that downloads the updates and then passes them to the vCenter Update Manager server, in this document we will look at the installation and configuration of VMware vSphere Update Manager Download Services (UMDS).

Installing VMware vSphere Update Manager 5.0

In this document, we will see the installation of the VMware Update Manager component in vSphere 5, it will allow us to keep our VMware virtual environment updated, in this new version, only ESXi servers and VMware virtual appliances with their latest updates and upgrades will be supported, previously, we could also apply patches to Microsoft virtual machines & Linux. After installing the service, each client connecting to the vCenter will need to download and enable the Plugin to manage VUM,

vCenter Host Agent Pre-Upgrade Checker

Before updating our VMware vSphere infrastructure to VMware vSphere version 5 (our hosts to ESXi 5.0) we must run a utility available on the VMware vSphere DVD 5, where we can verify without service interruptions if our ESXi hosts are compatible for a potential version upgrade (from VMware ESXi 4.x to VMware ESXi 5.0) thanks to the vCenter Agent Pre-upgrade Check tool.

Installing VMware vCenter 5 and VMware vSphere Client 5

As we mentioned before, little by little we will be showing the new features of VMware vSphere 5, but first we must meet the requirements of these, in this document we will look at the installation of VMware vCenter Server & vCenter Client as well as its requirements,

What's New in vSphere 5 and licensing

This document is presented as a summary of the main new features of VMware vSphere 5 we will also try to explain the new and definitive licensing (now you also pay for RAM!). Until a few days ago, the licensing of vSphere 5 even affected the free version by limiting it to 8Gb of RAM, until a few days ago they rectified it by limiting it to 32Gb (as well as the rest of the products), since they even stop the entry of new customers O_o In addition, VMware is committed to giving us 7 years of support with the version 4.1, See…

Recovering a Deleted VMFS Partition

In this document we will see how to recover the contents of a deleted VMFS partition, In this document we will simulate that an 'administrator’ has deleted a VMFS volume from the disk manager in Windows because it had the LUN presented to the vCenter server where they perform backups using VCB, I had it presented in writing mode and not only with reading, so it can be a good example 🙂

FAQ: Booting from USB inside a virtual machine

This bootloader will allow us, among other of its many features, to boot from USB devices on computers that their BIOS does not support (even in virtual machines, That sometimes we've needed it). It is downloaded in ISO format and we will connect it to the VM at boot.

Configuring an EATON UPS on vSphere

In this document we will see a simple way to configure a shutdown in our VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure if we have a UPS from the manufacturer EATON. To do this, we will first need to have a VMware vMA appliance, where we will install Intelligent Power Protector (PPI) and he will be in charge of sending ordered shutdowns to our ESXi hosts.