Hi,
I am going to be doing a migration from VMWare Server 4.0 to VMWare Server 5.0. I have been reading over the upgrade manual and feel pretty good about the process. I do have a few questions and am looking for opinions before I start this process.
First, currently our VMWare Server 4.0 is running on a virtual machine running Server 2003 32 bit. I know I will have to build a new WMWare Server 5.0 with Windows 2008R2 64 bit, and then migrate my database. I am considering putting the WMWare Server 5.0 on it's own physical blade instead of building it as a VM. Are there any advantages or disadvantages one way or another on this as far as making it a physical server or a VM?
Also and this is really my main concern. Our current VMWare Server 4.0 is NOT domain joined. From what I read it is preferred the server be domain joined. Also I have read the easiest migration will be to use the same server name. If I build my new server with the same name and domain join it, does anyone see any issues with the database migration since the 4.0 server was NOT domain joined?
Only other question is my current database is on a full install of Microsoft SQL 2005 and I imagine I will be using a full install of Microsoft SQL 2008 on the new server. Any issue there?
Otherwise it appears the upgrade manual has it pretty much layed out step by step what to do and I don't really see any major issues. Anyone who has done this before care to point out any "gotchas" or "be carefuls"?
I also assume getting the server migrated will be the worst of it, and the actual migration of the hosts from 4.0ESXi to 5.0ESX should be pretty simple? The plan there is to schedule some down time and just turn off all the VMs and then run update manager and let it do it's thing.
Thanks,
Dennis