An administrator is performing upgrades to ESXi 5.0 from ESX 3.x and ESX 4.x hosts. What is true about this procedure?
A.
A direct, in-place upgrade can be performed only on ESX 4.1 and later hosts
B.
ESX 3.x and later hosts can be upgraded, but the upgrade cannot be performed in place
C.
A direct, in-place upgrade can be performed only on ESX 4.0 and later hosts
D.
A direct, in-place upgrade can be performed only on ESX 3.5 and later hosts
Explanation:
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-upgrade-guide.pdf
The answer, according to VMWare, is A (we’re talking about Host upgrades, not VCenter upgrades):
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/upgrade.html
Phase 2: Upgrade your hosts to ESXi 5.0. This may be done in a rolling manner, with individual hosts in a cluster successively updated after virtual machines are vMotioned to the other remaining running hosts. By doing so, you can avoid virtual machine downtime. VMware Update Manager can be used to perform in-place upgrades of hosts running vSphere 4.1, or you may choose to do a clean installation of ESXi 5.0.
Hi Pedro,
You are incorrect sir. The correct answer here is ‘C’. It is true that Update Manager only allows 4.1 to update to 5.0. However, this is not the only method of upgrading a host. See the following document, page 28.
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-50-Upgrade-Best-Practices-Technical-White-Paper.pdf
The correct answer is B.
NOTE: All answers have “A direct, in-place upgrade CAN BE PERFORMED ONLY…”.
You can upgrade your ESX/ESXi 4.x hosts to ESXi 5.0 using either the ESXi Installer or vSphere Update Manager…..In both cases, the host upgrade is performed IN PLACE, preserving the host configuration and enabling a quick,easy upgrade with minimal impact to the business
Page 28 on http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-50-Upgrade-Best-Practices-Technical-White-Paper.pdf