Book Image

VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook

By : Abhilash G B
Book Image

VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook

By: Abhilash G B

Overview of this book

Amidst all the recent competition from Citrix and Microsoft, VMware's vSphere product line is still the most feature rich and futuristic product in the virtualization industry. Knowing how to install and configure vSphere components is important to give yourself a head start towards virtualization using VMware. If you want to quickly grasp the installation and configuration procedures, especially by using the new vSphere 5.1 web client, this book is for you.VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook will take you through all the steps required to accomplish a task with minimal reading required. Most of the tasks are accompanied with relevant screenshots with an intention to provide a visual guidance as well.The book has many useful recipes that will help you progress through the installation of VMware ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1. You will learn to use Auto Deploy and Image Profiles to deploy stateless/stateful ESXi servers, configure failover protection for virtual machines using vSphere HA, configure automated load balancing using vSphere DRS and DPM. Finally, the book guides you through upgrading or patching ESXi servers using VMware Update Manager and also deploying and configuring vSphere Management Assistant (VMA) to be able to run scripts to manage the ESXi servers.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Upgrading the virtual machine hardware


Once VMware Tools have been upgraded, you can then upgrade the virtual hardware for the virtual machines. The virtual hardware will determine the BIOS/EFI used, CPU and memory maximums for the virtual machine, and other features. The virtual hardware version released with ESX 5.1 is 9. In this recipe, I will discuss the steps required to upgrade the virtual machine hardware. Once you upgrade the virtual hardware version to the current, you cannot downgrade it. If you have a multi-version ESX cluster, then make sure that the VM version (virtual hardware version) is at a level supported by all the participating hosts in the cluster. Also, for the upgrade to complete, the virtual machine requires a downtime.

How to do it...

The virtual hardware upgrade can be either done using vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client. I will show you how to perform the task using the vSphere Web Client:

  1. Connect to the vCenter Server using the Web Client.

  2. Navigate to the VMs and Templates Inventory view.

  3. Locate the VM and power off if you intend to perform the upgrade now.

  4. Right-click on the VM and navigate to All vCenter Actions | Compatibility | Upgrade VM Compatibility.

  5. Click on Yes in the conformation prompt.

  6. On the Configure VM Compatibility dialog box, select the ESX version you had upgraded the server to and click on OK to finish reconfiguring the VM.

How it works...

We cannot finish the virtual hardware upgrade while the virtual machine is powered on. Hence, we need to power off the virtual machine for an immediate upgrade. If you have a large number of virtual machines, then you can schedule the virtual hardware upgrade to happen during the next reboot of the virtual machine.

Click on Yes to confirm scheduling an upgrade and then select an appropriate version. Click on OK to schedule the upgrade.