How do I Upgrade Virtual Machines

You can upgrade virtual machines to a higher level of compatibility and a higher version of VMware tools. After the upgrade, your VMs can take advantage of new hardware options and new features.

For a list of hardware features available to virtual machines with each ESXi hardware compatibility setting, see Hardware Features Available with Virtual Machine Compatibility Settings.

To determine whether your virtual machines are compatible with a new version of ESXi, see Virtual Machine Compatibility.

VMware Tools Upgrade

The first step in upgrading virtual machines is to upgrade VMware Tools. Installing VMware Tools is part of the process of creating a new virtual machine. If you are installing VMware Tools in multiple virtual machines with Windows guest operating systems, you can automate its installation and specify options for the components to include or exclude. For information about installing, upgrading, and configuring VMware Tools, see the VMware Tools User Guide.

If the virtual machines do not have VMware Tools installed, you can use the VMware Tools upgrade procedure to install VMware Tools. After you install or upgrade VMware Tools, upgrade the virtual machine compatibility.

Virtual Machine Compatibility Upgrade

VMware offers the following tools for upgrading virtual machines:

vSphere Client

Requires that you perform the virtual machine upgrade one step at a time, but does not require vSphere Lifecycle Manager.

In the vSphere Client, you can upgrade virtual machines manually, or schedule upgrades.

Manual Upgrade: Use this procedure to upgrade one or more virtual machines to the latest supported virtual hardware version immediately.
Schedule VM Upgrades: Use this procedure to schedule an upgrade of one or more virtual machines at the next reboot of the virtual machine, and choose from all supported compatibility level upgrades.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

Automates the process of upgrading and patching virtual machines, ensuring that the steps occur in the correct order. You can use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to directly upgrade virtual machine hardware, VMware Tools, and virtual appliances. You can also patch and update third-party software running on the virtual machines and virtual appliances. See the vSphere Lifecycle Manager documentation.

Note: Do not use vmware-vmupgrade.exe to upgrade virtual machines.

Note: Upgrading virtual machine hardware is a heavyweight operation that might cause some applications or the operating system to stop working properly.

Downtime for Upgrading Virtual Machines

During a virtual machine compatibility upgrade, you must shut down the virtual machine for all guest operating systems. For VMware Tools upgrade, downtime is not required for many Linux operating systems.

Table 1. Virtual Machine Downtime by Guest Operating System
Guest Operating System	Upgrade VMware Tools	Upgrade Virtual Machine Compatibility
Microsoft Windows	Downtime to restart the guest operating system.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.
Linux	Downtime to restart the guest operating system is required to load drivers.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.
NetWare	No downtime.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.
Solaris	No downtime.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.
FreeBSD	No downtime.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.
Mac OS X	No downtime.	Downtime to shut down and power on the virtual machine.

Note: For Linux guest operating systems, VMXNET3 and PVSCSI drivers are embedded in the Linux kernel. Linux virtual machines do not use VMware Tools to load VMXNET3 and PVSCSI drivers.

To load the new versions of the VMXNET driver, you must restart the virtual machine or manually reload the driver. Manual restart is not required for the Linux guest operating system using kernel version 3.10.

To verify that the drivers are configured in the Linux kernel and that the virtual hardware is available, see the VMware Knowledge Base article at: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2050364.

Planning Downtime for Virtual Machines

You can stagger virtual machine downtimes to accommodate a schedule convenient to you and your customers.

For example:

If your virtual machine users are located in diverse time zones, you can prepare by migrating virtual machines to specific hosts to serve a given time zone. This way you can arrange host upgrades so that virtual machine downtime occurs transparently outside business hours for that time zone.
If your virtual machine users operate around the clock, you can delay downtime for their virtual machines to normally scheduled maintenance periods. You do not need to upgrade any stage within a certain time period. You can take as long as needed at any stage.

Upgrade the Compatibility of a Virtual Machine Manually

The virtual machine compatibility determines the virtual hardware available to the virtual machine, which corresponds to the physical hardware available on the host machine. You can upgrade the compatibility level to make additional hardware available to the virtual machine.

Important: Upgrading virtual machine hardware might cause some applications or the operating system to stop working properly. Perform a hardware version upgrade only if you need a feature that comes with the newer hardware version.

Prerequisites

Create a backup or snapshot of the virtual machines. See Manage Virtual Machines With Snapshots.
Upgrade VMware Tools. On Microsoft Windows VMs, the virtual machine might lose its network settings if you upgrade the compatibility before you upgrade VMware Tools.
Verify that all virtual machines and their .vmdk files are stored on storage connected to the ESXi host or the client machine.
Determine the ESXi versions that you want the virtual machines to be compatible with. See Virtual Machine Compatibility.
Check whether the guest operating systems of the virtual machines that you upgrade require a power off. For example, some Linux operating systems do not require a power-off before a virtual machine compatibility upgrade. See Downtime for Upgrading Virtual Machines.

Procedure

In the vSphere Client, navigate to the virtual machine.
(Optional) Right-click the virtual machine and select Power > Power Off.
Select Actions > Compatibility > Upgrade VM Compatibility.
Click Yes to confirm the upgrade.
Select a compatibility and click OK.

Schedule a Compatibility Upgrade for a Virtual Machine

The virtual machine compatibility determines the virtual hardware available to the virtual machine, which corresponds to the physical hardware available on the host. You can schedule a compatibility upgrade to make a virtual machine compatible with newer versions of ESXi.

Use this procedure to schedule an upgrade for one virtual machine at the next reboot of the virtual machine, and choose from all supported compatibility level upgrades. To upgrade virtual machines immediately to the latest supported compatibility, see Upgrade the Compatibility of a Virtual Machine Manually.

You can use this procedure to schedule an upgrade for multiple virtual machines.

For information about virtual machine hardware versions and compatibility, see Virtual Machine Compatibility.

Prerequisites

Power off the virtual machine.
Create a backup or snapshot of the virtual machine. See Manage Virtual Machines With Snapshots.
Upgrade to the latest version of VMware Tools. If you upgrade the compatibility before you upgrade VMware Tools, the virtual machine might lose its network settings.
Verify that all .vmdk files are available to the ESX/ESXi host on a VMFS5 or NFS datastore.
Verify that the virtual machine is stored on VMFS5 or NFS datastores.
Verify that the compatibility settings for the virtual machine are not the latest supported version.
Determine the ESXi version that you want the virtual machine to be compatible with. See Virtual Machine Compatibility.

Procedure

Navigate to a virtual machine in the inventory.
Right-click the virtual machine and select Compatibility > Schedule VM Compatibility Upgrade.
In the Schedule VM Compatibility Upgrade dialog box, confirm that you want to schedule a compatibility upgrade by clicking Yes.
From the Compatible with drop-down menu, select the compatibility to upgrade to.
The virtual machine compatibility is upgraded the next time you restart the virtual machine.
(Optional) To upgrade the compatibility when you do regularly scheduled guest maintenance, select Only upgrade after normal guest OS shutdown.
This prevents the scheduled upgrade from occurring unless the guest operating system of the virtual machine is shut down or restarted normally.

Results

Each of the selected virtual machines is upgraded to the compatibility that you chose at the next reboot of the virtual machine, and the Compatibility setting is updated in the Summary tab of the virtual machine.