I have a customer with a Dell R220 Virtual IPEdge running Esxi 5.5 Customers IT Group needs us to upgrade the ESXi to 6.xx
I have never had to do that. What is involved in updating. I logged into the my vmware account and don't see License Keys.
I have reached out to Toshiba/Mitel but gave me an article from manual, but it doesn't match up to website.
Not able to talk to Dell because they want online submission of ticket, which won't give an option to put in a support ticket under login.
Has anyone done this upgrade?
Is the license a virtual license or a dongle?
One option is to upgrade VMWare in place. I believe that you can do that, but I would get some good backups. You may need a new key for version 6.0 but you should be able to get a new key on your VMWare account. Our company upgraded our file servers from 5.5 to 6. I seem to remember that it went pretty easy. VMWare has some documentation regarding upgrading to 6.0
Option 2 would be to install a VMware 6 and IPEdge clean using an OVA file. If the licensing is virtual then you would need to transfer the license online on FYI. If you have ACD, then they don't have the OVA for the Windows 7 available to download. You would need to have one of the USB flash drives that were shipped with the IPEdge
If it was my customer, I would consider how long the system has been up, and consider replacing the existing hard drives if they are more than 5 years old. Reinstalling VMWare and the IPEdge is probably going to take more time than just upgrading VMWare on the same machine.
On a more recent customer, I used VMWare version 6.5 and IPEdge 1.7.3 and it works pretty well.
Thank you David for the response.
They are a virtual license running 1.7.3. So I can go into the vmware account, download 6.5, which will give me a new license key that I have to register the existing server. then use a USB Drive to upgrade the machine?
I understand what you are saying as far as upgrading with new drives, but not comfortable doing that, plus I want to keep the down time to a minimum
No matter how you do it, backup the system (main IPEdge backup and messaging). Download both backups to your PC. It would not hurt to already download 1.7.3 OVA file. It is 4 GB and it can take a while depending on your Internet speed.
The last time I upgraded VMWare 5.5 to 6.0, it was pretty easy, pretty much just like you said. Download the new ESXi and boot to USB. We were pretty nervous when we upgraded our file server, but it ended up being pretty easy.
It would be good to know how to reinstall IPEdge if something goes wrong. I have done this a few times now due to failed systems. It is pretty easy. It is about 1-2 hours of downtime to get it fully up and running again.
The nice thing about VMWare 6.5 is that you can manage from a web browser instead of a client.
I upgraded the VM Ware on a Dell IPedge around a year ago. I followed the documentation on FYI and it went pretty simply. Was nervous before starting as it was for a large credit union with 300 + extensions with StrataNet to 30 CIX systems. One thing my IT manager recommended was stepping the VM Ware incrementally, rather than going straight to 6.5. Took about 2 hours to do it all.