The not-so-zero downtime VMware Tools Upgrade in vSphere 5.1

One of the cool new features of vSphere 5.1 is something that was announced as "Zero downtime VMware Tools upgrade". On my personal Top 5 list of vSphere 5.1 new features I even rated it #2, not without being skeptical about the zero downtime promise ...

A recent post by William Lam on the VMware vSphere Blog clarifies in what scenarios the zero downtime really applies. It is worth being fully read, but for readers who are always in a rush (or have a too short attention span ;-) I will wrap it up in a few bullet points:

• It works for Windows guests only, starting with Windows Vista
• If device drivers that are needed for booting (Display, vmscsi, pvscsi) are updated then a reboot is still required
• KB2015163 explains in detail if and when a reboot is still required after updating the Tools in a Windows VM

Please note: Given the fact that device drivers are rarely updated this is still a great progress compared to the pre-5.1 VMware Tools that would always require a reboot after an update!

VMware Converter 5.0.1 released, now supports vSphere 5.1

As announced in my last post VMware released the Converter 5.0.1 today which now supports ESXi 5.1 and vCenter 5.1.

• Download link
• Release Notes

Be aware: Converter 5.0 does not (yet) work with vSphere 5.1

Those of you who have just completed a brand new vSphere 5.1 deployment or upgraded your production environment to 5.1 may run into a real show stopper ... once you try to virtualize a physical server into this environment using VMware Converter. Why? Because the current release of VMware Converter (5.0) does not work together with ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1! The 5.0 version of the Converter is a bit old now and has not yet been adapted to work with vSphere 5.1. Maybe VMware just forgot that, or was in such a hurry to release vSphere 5.1 that they intentionally neglected Converter compatibility.

If you desperately need to use Converter with vSphere 5.1 *now* then you have the following work arounds available:
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vSphere 5.1 new features: My top 5 and some less known

This week VMware announced vSphere 5.1 at VMworld in San Francisco. The VMware Blogosphere is already flooded with lists of what's new in this release, so I decided to elaborate on my personal top 5 new features and some less known new features instead of repeating the news over and over. Here we go:
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