VMware vSphere Upgrade Center

Overview:

VMware vSphere™ 4 is the industry’s first cloud operating system, transforming your IT infrastructure into a private cloud—a collection of internal clouds federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service. Combining VMware’s industry leading virtualization technology and experience, VMware vSphere delivers greater efficiency with uncompromising control, all while preserving customer choice.

Increased Network Throughput and Disk I/O

Maximize Application Throughput and Operational Efficiency

Reduce capital and operational costs by maximizing application throughput:

• Get up to 8900 db transactions per second per virtual machine¹ and more than 200,000 I/O operations per second per VMware ESX host
• Increase MS SQL Server throughput efficiency by 20% and Citrix XenApp throughput by 30%
• Get three times (3x) the network transmit throughput of VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and gain up to ten times (10x) more iSCSI throughput to storage²
• Manage a record number of MS Exchange mailboxes per host³

Increase operational efficiency as you:

• Simplify and enhance network provisioning, monitoring and administration in VMware vSphere™ environments with vNetwork Distributed Switch and third party switches such as the Cisco Nexus 1000v
• Maximize storage with vStorage Thin Provisioning
• Save power by automatically consolidating virtual machines and powering off unused servers during periods of low usage with Distributed Power Management

View the What's New in VMware vSphere 4: Performance Enhancements Whitepaper

Increase Control through Service Level Automation

Increase control over application availability levels and meet your service level agreements.

• Deliver zero downtime, zero data loss continuous availability to any application through VMware Fault Tolerance
• Protect yourself from data outages with built-in, cost effective backup and recovery of any application with VMware Data Recovery
• Increase scalability of virtual machines with up to 8 virtual CPUs, 255GB of RAM, 21 virtual storage and network devices and up to 120TB of virtual disks, as needed, without disruption with hot add of virtual CPU and virtual memory, hot plug of virtual storage and network devices, and hot extend of virtual disks
• Enforce compliance to application level security policies across large pools of servers and virtual machines with VMware vShield Zones
• Enforce compliance to standard physical server configurations with Host Profiles which allow a designated “golden” server configuration profile to be applied to many physical ESX hosts
• Control multiple vSphere datacenters from a single pane of glass with VMware vCenter Server 4 linked mode
• Automate repetitive day to day tasks and execute routine maintenance activities at the push of a button in virtual environments with workflow automation provided by VMware vCenter Orchestrator, a component of vCenter Server

View the What's New in VMware vCenter Server 4 Whitepaper

Empower IT Departments with Choice

Let users select from a broad range of applications, operating systems or industry standard hardware supported by VMware vSphere to deliver services rapidly.

• Ensure delivery consistent application service levels regardless of choice of OS, application, hardware or even location with vApps on VMware vSphere
• Move new and existing applications between internal clouds or to vSphere-based external clouds while retaining service levels with vApp
• Increase your choice of end to end physical and virtual enterprise management frameworks, backup solutions and vCloud service providers with VMware Ready optimized solutions

¹ VMware Sets Virtualization Performance Records for Database and Web Workloads
² vSphere 4.0 supports 10 GigE with iSCSI
³ VMware Sets Capacity Record Running Microsoft Exchange on IBM System x3850 M2 Servers

Upgrade:

 

Determine Your Current VMware Infrastructure Deployment Scenario

Before starting down the path to VMware vSphere, it is worth taking some time to determine what your current VMware Infrastructure deployment scenario looks like with respect to the setup of VMware vCenter and how it is configured to support VI3 Clusters with Resource Pools, VMware HA and VMware DRS. Here we present a mapping of the supported VMware Infrastructure deployment scenarios with respect to VMware vCenter and storage for your boot volume and virtual machine datastores. The tactical steps that you will follow for the three phases associated with the VMware vSphere migration will be identical for all the deployment scenarios depicted in the diagram.

Understanding the Migration Path to VMware vSphere

Phase 1: Complete the upgrade of the VMware vCenter Server along with VMware Update Manager. VMware Converter Enterprise and VMware Guided Consolidation are two additional components that can be installed along with their respective VMware vCenter Client plug-in.

Phase 2: Choose from three VMware ESX migration methods. The three options are: VMware Update Manager, Host Update Utility or Clean Install of VMware ESX 4.

Phase 3: Complete the upgrade of your Virtual Machines by first upgrading VMware Tools, followed by the upgrade of the Virtual Hardware from version 4 to version 7.

VMware vSphere Licensing is not designated as a specific phase in the VMware vSphere Migration, as you have the choice to introduce VMware vSphere licensing immediately after Phase 1 is completed, or at any point while working on Phases 2 and 3.

How Do I Upgrade?

The four part video series (below) details the transition to VMware vSphere from VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3), covering the VMware vCenter management components, the VMware ESX host migration methods, the virtual machine upgrades (VMware Tools and virtual hardware) and implementing the VMware vSphere licensing.

Step-by-Step Migration Videos:

Part 1 of 4 VMware vCenter Management Components

Part 2 of 4 VMware ESX Host Migration Methods

Part 3 of 4 Virtual Machine Upgrades (VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware)

Part 4 of 4 Implementing VMware vSphere Licensing

What Can I Upgrade To?

Special Upgrade Promotions for Existing VMware Infrastructure Customers

Existing VMware Infrastructure 3 customers with active subscription contracts are automatically entitled to VMware vSphere 4 editions mapped to your existing VMware Infrastructure 3 license. In addition to the new features and capabilities provided through subscription services, VMware is offering limited time promotions to upgrade to new VMware vSphere editions:

• VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard to VMware vSphere 4 Advanced: At less than 50% of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as live migration with VMware VMotion, continuous availability, network security zoning, and data protection.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise to VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus: At less than 50% of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as dynamic resource allocation, power management, live migration, the distributed switch, and host configuration controls.

Note: Special promotion pricing ends on December 15, 2009.

Compare Editions:

 

* VMware ESX4.0 and ESXi 4.0 currently provide technical support for up to 1TB of memory.  Review the vSphere 4 Configuration Maximums document for more information.
**Enabler for 3rd party switch support