Hi,
I need to upgrade to 5.5 from 5.0 U1, system is installed on SD card.
I already upgraded once by popping in the CD and just following the installation, and at one point choosing to Upgrade the OS.
Now - reading the documentation it seems like it is necessary to install vCenter first, and then upgrade to 5.5. Is this the only way? Can't I upgrade ESXi just the way I did it before? I'm asking because I can't deploy vCenter just yet...
Also - a side question. I do not see anywhere in the documentation specified a need to backup the VMs on the host that is being upgraded. Is this not a good practice? Or is there no way an upgrade will mess with the VMs? I wouldn't want to lose any of the critical VMs, and backups of all of them will take forever.
Thanks,
Andrzej