vSphere 5.x Tip To Toe: Upgrading vSphere 5.0 to 5.1 (HP’s iLO3 Style)

Well, we’re upfront again and we have something to update after working hours =). Without any further delay, mainly I’m going to state on how to upgrade your vCenter installation along with its components but when it comes to ESXi upgrade I actually used a pretty cool feature that is found on HP’s servers within the iLO3 module.

vCenter:

1- Backup your databases (vCenter, Update Manager and SRM if exists) and SSL directory found under X:/ProgramData/VMware/SSL.

2- In vSphere 5.1 vCenter itself requires some prerequisites SSO (Single Sign On), Inventory Service and Installer 4.5 all of these are bundled in vCenter’s installation in Simple Mode.

• The installation starts with prerequisites in the mentioned order previously.
• SSO: since vCenter is already installed you’ll need to chose using an existing database, stop at this point of this installation and go to the installation directory X:\/Single Sign On/DBScripts/SSOServer/schema chose your database engine and run first “rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupTablespaces.sql” then “rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupUsers.sql” finally “rsaIMSLiteMSSQLCreateSchema.sql” also make sure to pay attention to the notes mentioned within the SQL queries, once done you can commence with the installation and your SSO database will be named RSA.
• The rest is straight forward and at a certain point you will be alerted that an existing version of vCenter is detected and you’ll be notified that this is upgradable.

3- Now, you can upgrade the rest of your components, vSphere Client, Update Manager, etc..

4- I do recommend you install vSphere Web Client (this is just one sweet web interface).

ESXi:

1- You can do this via Update Manger once its upgraded, just go to Admin View and upload the ESXi image then create a new baseline, attach it, stage it and remediate it, finally you’ll see all hosts coming back together ;-) but there is not much fun in that.

2- So, to what the topic says you can do an in-place upgrade of the ESXi hosts to v5.1, but isn’t it just so not wonderful to drag yourself from the chair and go to the data-center then put the CD then reboot then wait and wait and wait. So the beauty of HP servers is that they come with iLO (Integrated Lights Out) currently we’re at v3 and its pretty essential once you get used to it, so the feature within iLO3 which I’m talking about is recording what is actually happening on your console, of course this comes with iLO3 Advanced Pack. Primarily this feature is used to record crash events on servers to determine the purpose and lessen the time of troubleshooting.

3- Once you connect to your iLO3 IP, run the remote management console, attach the ESXi 5.1 ISO to it and reboot it. Once the server finishes POST press F11 for boot options and chose 1 for a booting for once from the CD ROM. I will leave the rest to the iLO video hereunder also I’ve put the link to download iLO’s Video Player.

Video: http://notes.doodzzz.net/vidz/Upgrade vSphere 5.0 to 5.1.ilo
iLO Video Player: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/sc-windows/p883069918/v66226/cp014402.exe

I hope you’ve enjoyed this as much as I did,

(Abdullah)^2