Upgrading VC2.5 to vSphare2.5 U4

Our environment was running virtual center 2.5 base edition. SQL was running one a shared database and virtual center server on one of the virtual machine. When we planned to upgrade to vShpare2.5 U4 we decided to move everything to physical server with database running on the same server. We shut down the VC service and disabled it so that no updates are happing on the database. After that we planned to perform database from SQL2000 to SQL2005. Once backup completed then we install SQL2005 on windows2003 server.

We then restored the old database on new SQL2005 server. Created new ODBC for SQL server.

With this we are ready to install vShare2.5 U4. It is quite simple and straight forward. It will detect the version of database and prompt for upgrade. We also have to insure that we have shut down VC license server and copy the license file to the new VC server.

After the upgrade is over we have to setup license server pointing to license file. Update the DNS and alias pointing to new vSphare 2.5 U4 server. We are ready to fire our VC client and point to the same "alias" . We may prompt to upgrade the client or it may work with same client.

Here are some surprise:

You will find all the host in disconnect state. DO NOT PANIC. This is normal because all the agent which runs on host is still pointing to old VC server. We have to perform reconnect with all the esx host. Yeah it is pain in the a#$%& and there is no work around. But good part was no permission change, no change in folder hierarchy . This gave me little bit of relief. I had pain with my ESX 2.X host connecting back to new VC. But everything went very smoothly .

It was cool experience to share.

Now new feature of vSphare 2.5 U4 which I did notice was :

You can perform hot cloning , yes hot cloning . You can clone running virtual machine without any packets drop. When it is at 3% then it think a lot J but after that it is very fast and user does not realize that machine is getting cloned . What I want to figure out is till what time that changes are captured? This will help me understand more about hot cloning.