I am preparing for a vSphere 4.1 to 5.1 upgrade, and one of the steps is to upgrade all my virtual hardware to version 7. (Yes, this should have been done long before now, but keep reading, please.) I've gotten almost all my VMs upgraded, and I'm down to upgrading Virtual Center and the MSSQL server where VC's database lives.
Clearly, I can't control the shutdown, upgrade, startup of these two boxes via Virtual Center. So, what's the best way to do that?
Unless someone has a better idea, I'm planning to:
Point my VI client directly to the ESX server on which both VMs run.
Shutdown Virtual Center, and the database server, in that order.
Upgrade their hardware.
Restart the database server, and make sure it's okay.
Restart Virtual Center and make sure it's okay.
Anything wrong with that plan?
Is there a better way?