hi all,
I am starting to read VMware documentation, forum threads, etc regarding upgrading ESX4.1U2 to ESXi5.1
Basically I have built a testing environment to mirror our production, so we can run the upgrade tests before commiting to production.
Production Environment:
8x Hosts running ESX4.1U2 - Dell Poweredge R710 - 2x146Gb HDD on Raid10 where ESX is installed
2xCPU sockets each host
128Gb Ram each host
1x VMware cluster will all 8x hosts
Storage:
8x Dell Equallogic SANs (mainly 6000 & 6100 series)
Test environment
2x Hosts running ESX4.1U2 - Dell Poweredge R710 - 2x146Gb HDD on Raid10 where ESX is installed
2xCPU sockets each host
24Gb Ram each host
1x VMware cluster running both hosts
Storage
1x Dell R710 running Freenas from USB stick
iSCSI connection
8Gb Ram
2x volumes configured and presented to hosts
I will also later add another R710 running Freenas to this Test environment
The R710 have an internal USB port, but we do not have the internal SD card module installed.
I am thinking of going the route of having the hosts running ESXi5.1 from internal USB and have a configuration backup via cron job every x hours so we can quickly load to spare USB stick in case of failure, corruption, etc.
My first quick question regarding upgrading from ESX4.1 to ESXi5.1 is: how easily can I migrate these host from HDD setup to USB????
Again I am starting reading the documentation,etc but any past experiences are much appreciated.
cheers, rb51