Upgrading ESXi v5.1 to v5.5?

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ZzBloopzZ

Member
Jan 7, 2013
91
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Hello,

I recently finished building/configuring my home All-In-One, which is on ESXi v5.1 Update 1. I did not realize that there is now ESXi v5.5! I have ESXi installed to a USB flash drive.

Is there a recommended way to upgrade to v5.5? With Windows OS, I personally always do fresh install's when upgrading. Should I keep same mentality for ESXi? Can I simply just reformat the flash drive and re-install ESXi from scratch? Hopefully the product key will transfer over, since it is the same system. I currently have one VM running which is OmniOS. I plan to delete this VM anyhow and re-install from scratch for the sake of practice/learning.

Appreciate any advice!
 

alex1002

Member
Apr 9, 2013
519
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I think there's a command line to upgrade. Or install vmware 5.5 will upgrade existing one.
 

wrigleyvillain

New Member
Oct 19, 2012
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Last edited:

tubs-ffm

Active Member
Sep 1, 2013
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But do not upgrade the hardware version to vmx-10 if you are using the free version of ESXi!
The vsphere client can manage vmx-9 hardware version only. For vmx-10 hardware version you need vsphere server with web client.
 

ZzBloopzZ

Member
Jan 7, 2013
91
13
8
Perhaps I should just stick with v5.1 then? Until they/if come out with full client support for VMX-10. Is there even any huge improvements with 5.5?

I have ESXi installed on a flash drive. Could I copy the contents elsewhere and then do the upgrade. If I have serious issues, could I simply delete the contents and copy the original back up. Would everything be back to normal then?
 

Fzdog2

Member
Sep 21, 2012
92
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VMware has stated that any new features and capabilities to vSphere will only be accessible from the web client, which requires a vCenter server installed and running. As there is no free vCenter option, you can either stay at vmx-9 hardware and the vSphere client or do continuous 60 day trials and keep reinstalling vCenter. Kind of a bad situation right now.
 

Zuhkov

New Member
Dec 30, 2012
27
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Texas
Perhaps I should just stick with v5.1 then? Until they/if come out with full client support for VMX-10. Is there even any huge improvements with 5.5?

I have ESXi installed on a flash drive. Could I copy the contents elsewhere and then do the upgrade. If I have serious issues, could I simply delete the contents and copy the original back up. Would everything be back to normal then?
I'm sticking with 5.1, at least for the time being. You should be able to make an image of the flash drive (using dd or something similar). The main thing that is not undo-able would be if you upgraded the virtual hardware of any of your VMs to version 10. There are ways to re-create the VM configs to get around that, but the changes to the VMs are not stored on the flash drive, so that's just something to be aware of. What I do for my host is I have two identical flash drives. Every time a new major or minor version of ESXi comes out, I swap flash drives and do a clean install. It has helped me do quick rollbacks in a couple instances.
 

ZzBloopzZ

Member
Jan 7, 2013
91
13
8
I have decided to stay with 5.1 Update 1 for now. Everything is working fast and stable at the moment. Hopefully they will change their policy for 5.5 in the future.

Thanks for the feedback!