Our ESXi environment consists of four hosts with VCenter server with an EMC VNXe SAN. It's all on 5.0 but, I'm about to upgrade to 5.5 and add an additional host at the same time. Here's my questions.
1. Can I backup the config on an existing host and edit it (host name, IP, etc) to import into the new host? I haven't seen a way to edit the config file once I export it as a backup. The only way I can come up with is to browse the datastore, grab the config txt file and import that once the new host is powered up. Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill by over-thinking this?
2. Will I shoot myself in the foot if I bring the new host online at 5.5 along side the existing hosts at 5.0? The reason for this is because resources are tight on the four existing hosts and I can' t vmotioin all of the VMs meaning I'll have to shut down servers.. If I can bring up the new host at 5.5 that would allow me to upgrade without experiencing significant downtime.
Thanks for the input.
Tony