VMTools and virtual hardware upgrade

VMTools and virtual hardware upgrade

With the continuous advancement of virtualization technology, virtualization products of various manufacturers are also constantly innovating. VMware, as an important manufacturer of server virtualization, has a high market share of its VSphere platform. Therefore, every time a new version is released, there will be countless virtualization technology enthusiasts upgrading and trying it out first. I am also one of them, of course, after the ESXi upgrade is completed, the virtual machine management tool must be upgraded to the corresponding version. Otherwise, the new version cannot be used.

Next, I will share with you how to upgrade VMTools and Virtual Hardware when ESX3.5U4 is upgraded to ESXi4.1U1.
1. Upgrade background
The current version of VMTools is earlier than that of the ESXi host, and the virtual hardware version is 4 and the latest version is 7. Based on this background, all Virtual Machine VMTools and virtual hardware are upgraded.

2. Upgrade preparation
① The virtual machines to be upgraded are grouped by application type and owner to facilitate batch upgrade and centralized verification.
② Determine the downtime based on the appropriate conditions for the group and all application owner contacts.
③ Confirm the OS version of the VM to be upgraded.

3. Upgrade procedure
① Using snapshots to back up virtual machines is necessary to facilitate disaster recovery because the upgrade process is irreversible.
② Use the vsphere client console to open the VM and select [install/upgrade VMware Tools ].

There are two ways to upgrade VMTools:
One is automatic tool upgrade, which is in silent mode, and is automatically upgraded in the background. We recommend that you use this mode when the operating system is Windows 2008 or later.
The other is an interactive tool upgrade. manual intervention is required to perform the upgrade based on the Wizard to facilitate troubleshooting. We recommend that you use this method on Windows 2003 and earlier.

③ After the VMTools installation is complete, the operating system restarts automatically. After the restart is complete, go to the system and check whether the VMTools installation is normal.
VMTools icon before Upgrade
VMTools icon after upgrade
④ Close the VM after confirming that the VMTools upgrade is complete

⑤ Click upgrade Virtual Hardware in VM properties. The VM hardware version is upgraded from 4 to 7.

Virtual Hardware 7 features:
New storage virtual devices
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) virtual devices-Provides support for running Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering deployments.
IDE virtual device-Ideal for supporting older operating systems that lack SCSI drivers.
VMXNET Generation 3-See the vNetwork section of this feature list.
Hot plug support for virtual devices and hot add support for memory and virtual CPUs
⑥ The virtual hardware upgrade process is very fast, which can be completed in a few seconds. After the VM is started, the system will prompt that the new hardware is being installed and ask to restart the system.

7. After the system is restarted, confirm that the VMTools and Virtual Hardware versions are correct and the upgrade is complete.
4. Upgrade considerations
① Snapshots or other backup work must be performed before the upgrade. Otherwise, the upgrade process will be irreversible.
② After the automatic tool is upgraded to VMTools, the system will automatically restart. During manual tool upgrade, the system prompts you to restart the system with the switch option.
③ Upgrade the virtual hardware to the shutdown status.
④ After the virtual hardware upgrade, the relevant hardware will automatically install the driver, including the updated NIC driver information, so you cannot log on to the domain immediately.
⑤ The entire upgrade process must be restarted at least twice. One VMTools and one virtual hardware driver.
⑥ When upgrading some Windows 2003 servers, the VMXnet NIC driver cannot be properly installed. In this case, the installation process is stuck and VSphere Client cannot be used to cancel the installation, restart or shut down the system. After a long period of no response, a timeout message is displayed.

Solution: If the guest system does not crash or the system stops responding, open the system task manager and run the "setup.exe" command to end the installation process. The VSphere Client obtains control again.
7. There will be a large number of disk IO bursts throughout the upgrade process, and the storage performance will affect the upgrade process. If the disk delay is too large, it will seriously affect the upgrade time and may even fail to continue the upgrade.

Some Windows 2008 servers, after upgrading the virtual machine hardware, will have Independent Disks except the system disk offline, the disk needs to be manually launched.
Virtual Machine Hardware upgrades by the supervisor may cause loss of Virtual Machine network configuration information. You need to use the local administrator to enter the system and reconfigure the network configuration information.