Upgrading ESX/ESXi 3.5 or 4.0 to ESX/ESXi 4.1

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps which may be useful when upgrading from ESX/ESXi 3.5 or 4.0 to ESX/ESXi 4.1.

For information on upgrading from ESX 3.x, see Upgrading to ESX 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1 best practices (1022104).

Note: This article assumes that you have read:

• The VMware ESX 4.1 Release Notes
• The vSphere Upgrade Guide. This guide contains definitive information. If there is a discrepancy between the guide and this article, assume that the guide is correct.

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.1.x

Resolution

To evaluate which upgrade method you should use when upgrading your ESX or ESXi host to 4.1, see Updating ESX 4.x to a newer released update (1016209).

This table outlines an upgrade matrix containing upgrade options for applicable versions of ESX/ESXi:

Note: To get the appropriate version of the ESX/ESXi 4.1 upgrade package as outlined in the table, visit the vSphere Download Center.

Product	Version From	Update Manager 4.1* 1	vihostupdate *2	esxupdate (Service Console) *3	esxupgrade.sh *4
ESX	ESX 3.5.x	Yes (ISO)	No	No	Yes (ISO)
	ESX 4.0	Yes (ZIP)	Yes (ZIP)	Yes (ZIP)	No
ESXi (Embedded)	ESXi 3.5.x	Yes (ZIP)	No	No	No
	ESXi 4.0	Yes (ZIP)	Yes (ZIP)	No	No
ESXi (Installable)	ESXi 3.5.x	Yes (ZIP)	No	No	No
	ESXi 4.0	Yes (ZIP)	Yes (ZIP)	No	No

*1 - See the VMware vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide.
*2 - For more information, see the vSphere Upgrade Guide.
*3 - For more information, see About the esxupdate Utility in the ESX 4 Patch Management Guide.
*4 - See article Performing an offline upgrade from ESX 3.x to ESX 4.x (1009440).

Upgrading using VMware Update Manager

Upgrading using esxupdate

Upgrading using vihostupdate

Additional Information

Actualizando ESX 4.0 a ESX 4.1
Atualizando ESX 4.0 com taxa de 4,1 ESX
ESX 4.0 から ESX 4.1 へのアップグレードについて
Methods of upgrading to ESXi 5.0
将 ESX/ESXi 3.5 或 4.0 升级到 ESX/ESXi 4.1