Starting to prepare now for an upcoming vSphere 5.0 to 5.5 upgrade project and was building my thought process on upgrading the vCenter Server. Should I propose Simple Install or Custom Install? VMware’s recommended method is Simple Install where all components are installed in a single machine/VM. This method puts all components in the default location in C:\ drive.
But we know that there are customers who have an OS policy that disallows use of C:\ drive for any application other than the OS itself. In this scenario, you will be forced to use the Custom Install method.
But there is one major gotcha with this as I have experienced in my vSphere 4.1 to 5.1 upgrade last year. I was actually surprised that this is still the case in vSphere 5.5. Look at KB 2044953. There is known issue when installing Web Client in a different directory other than the default. Web Client will not work and will throw an HTTP 404 error. The workaround is to re-install web client back to the default directory. There is another alternate workaround stated in the KB to put Web Client in a directory that does not contain spaces. I have not tested this though.
A very short post but I hope this helps vSphere Admins who are planning to upgrade to vCenter 5.5.
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