How to upgrade ESXi 4.0 to ESXi 4.1

I have done this a couple of times for my customers so I thought to document it for you.

In this senario I have 1 ESX1 4.0 host who I want to upgrade to ESX1 4.1. For this task I’m going to use the vihostupdate utility on the VMware Management Assistant (vMA).

First thing to do is to download the upgrade package (a zip file) form vmware.com. I guess you can find the package. Upload the file (upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip) to the vMA. Because I’m using my OpenSuse desktop I can use the scp command:

scp upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip vi-admin@10.1.0.2:~

If you don’t have Linux on your desktop you can use a tool like WinSCP to do the trick.

Notice that you have to use the user vi-admin because of security policies you cannot use root. When the file is uploaded login through ssh on the vMA (for Windows users you can use putty).

Before we can upgrade the ESX1 4.0 host we have to put the host in maintenance mode. I assume you all know how to do this. When the ESXi host is in maintenance mode, the first step we have to take is to upgrade esxupdate utility on the ESXi host.

vihostupdate –server [ip-adress] -i -b [path to upgrade zip file] -B ESXi410-GA-esxupdate

Note: The command is case sensitive!

Now we can upgrade the host.

vihostupdate –server [ip-adress] -i -b [path to upgrade zip file] -B ESXi410-GA

When the host is upgrade you can check the upgrade by entering the command:

vihostupdate –server [ip-adress] –query

If al is fine reboot the host and take it out of maintenance mode.

VMworld 2010 Copenhagen

Yes, I’m proudly to say that this will be the first time that I will attend VMworld 2010 in Copenhagen!

A couple of day’s ago I made my schedule and planned the evening events 🙂 for next week. I will try to blog every day about the session I will follow. The main interess is to follow the session about Cloud Computing. I think (and I’m not the only one) that vCD (VMware Cloud Director) will be one of the important products for VMware for the next few years. Of course I will follow session about VMware vSphere (especially the one about the road-maps) and VMware View. But the main focus will be Cloud Compunting.