I have been fortunate enough to be involved with the VMware vSphere Beta programme and as such have been running ESX 3.5 and vSphere Beta test lab environments alongside each other for the last few months.

I decided that it was now time to bring my  primary VI3 lab (running fulltime W2K8 DC, MS SQL 2005, 2 x W2K3 VMs) onto vSphere.  The first steps I took was to upgrade my existing vCenter Server 2.5 installation to vCenter Server 4.0. 

My installation of vCenter Server 2.5 U4 was running on a VM located in a cluster with HA and DRM.  Prior to performing the upgrade I was running VMware ESXi 3.5 U4 on a pair of ML110’s (G5) which were connected to my Shuttle XPC running OpenFiler (iSCSI storage) containing the VMs.  Before starting any of this I was sure to make a backup of the SQL DB used by vCenter Server – just in case disaster was to strike.

I thought some of you may be interested to see the steps and associated screen shots with performing  an upgrade  – as lets face it many of us will be having to perform this at work in the coming months. 

The good news is that I found it a smooth and trouble free experience.  The following are the screen shots involved with performing the upgrade on vCenter Server and the VMware Infrastructure Client (VIC).  I will cover upgrading your ESX(i) in a later posting  and won’t go into too much detail as the following screen shots are pretty self explanatory. 

Below:  Sign your life away to VMware. 

Below: In most instances you will be using ‘Windows NT Authentication’ so these fields can be left blank.

Below: A warning informing me that my MS SQL server is in ‘Full Recovery’ mode.  It’s just my test lab so I haven’t got around to changing this yet.  This however won’t stop the upgrade progressing. 

Below: Go on, live on the edge… upgrade it – though make sure you have taken a DB backup first else certain doom and the law of Sod awaits!

Below: This is an opportunity to specify alternative port numbers for the Web, LDAP, heartbeat and SSL port if required.  Though for ease of future trouble shooting and to avoid confusion try and leave it at the defaults where possible.

Below: Hooray – the upgrade is off and racing…

Below: ..So far so good…

Below: ..Looking hopeful…

Below: ..Almost there….

Below: Ah, crap ! It was going so well….  Don’t worry despite getting this error message everything after the install continued to work without any problems.  Others on the VMware forum here have also experienced the same issue when upgrading to earlier versions of vCenter Server.

Below: Ta-daa….  Upgrade of vCenter Server is complete!

Next  I wanted to upgrade my VMware Infrastructure Client (VIC).  An easy way to kick off this upgrade process is to open the VIC and upon entering your logon credentials and clicking ‘Login’ you will be notified that you will need to upgrade the VIC.  It will then download the necessary update package and kick off the upgrade procedure.

The follow screenshots below are what you are presented with during this process.  Once again I will keep comments to a minimum as the screenshots are pretty self explanatory.

Below: Depending on your host update distribution method consider installing the vSphere Host Update Utility.

You now have an updated copy of the artist formally known as ‘VMware Infrastructure Client (VIC).  As you can see the VIC is now called the ‘vSphere Client’.  One point of note: see how you now have the option of Windows authentication using the currently logged on users credentials.

Below: Once logged in successfully (ignoring the evaluation license method – in this instance I hadn’t installed my key) notice the new default portal screen.

Below: Here’s a close up screenshot. Notice how there are now 3 distinct categories: Inventory, Administration and Management.  This is a nice improvement to the user interface in my opinion, especially for first time users.  All these settings are able to be accessed under the usual tabs as previously.

Below: Once logged in and you have selected ‘Hosts and Clusters’ you’ll be presented with the familiar looking screen below.  See if you can notice the differences with vCenter Server v2.5 – there are only a couple in this particular view.

I hope you enjoyed this brief taster on upgrading from VMware vCenter Server 2.5 to 4.0.  I found it an easy pain free process so hopefully once you go to perform your upgrade you find it the same.