I am in the process of planning for a large infrastructure upgrade from ESX3.5 to vSphere 4. As part of the planning I've been looking at Virtual Machine Virtual Hardware Versions. Currently all VM's are running Version 4, but as we migrate to ESX4 we will have the option to upgrade to Version 7.
Instead of just upgrading all VM's no questions asked, I decided to try and answer these following questions;
Here is what I've found
Exactly what does Version 7 offer that Version 4 doesn't?
Virtual Hardware Version 7 offers five new features.
What is the upgrade process?
VMware Tools must be upgraded before you try to upgrade the Virtual Hardware
The upgrade process is very simple. It can either be done manually or you can automate it using VMware Upgrade Manager.
There are also things that need to be considered before upgrading;
Will upgrading introduce any downtime?
There will always be downtime when upgrading the Virtual Hardware regardless of the Operating System. The VM needs to be Powered Off when initiating the upgrade. Once turned on the OS will detect the new devices and then prompts for a reboot. Failing to reboot will result in the new devices not working correctly.
There will not be any downtime to vCenter or any of your ESX Hosts.
Could there be any issues after the upgrade which may cause the VM to not function correctly?
Doing a quick search on the VMware Knowledgebase and the VMTN Communities returns a few issues that have been found.
Using Snapshots give you the option to revert back if there is an issue. You could also run a test. Clone the VM that you wish to upgrade and upgrade the Clone first to see if there are any issues. If there are you can find a resolution for when you upgrade the proper VM.
Summary
As always the answer is "It Depends".
The question you need to ask yourself is: Will the VM make use of the new features offered by Version 7?
Sources
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I would like to comment on the issues that may happen. We upgraded 20 or so machines to vsphere and had issues with our Windows Server 2008 vm's. They did not like the old NIC's and SCSI adapters that were in their configurations pre-upgrade. We ended up having to change them all to the new virtual versions that come with upgrade i.e. vmxnet3 nic's. Just a note if you have MASSIVE performance issues with a 2k8 vm.
Excellent