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Unfortunately you can't use update manager to do this upgrade.  You will find more info here.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/upgrade.html#c177045

can you upgrade directly using Vcenter or the host update utility or is there another step for converting from ESX to ESXi?

It uses basic sysprep to do this, so if you are uncomfortable using sysprep then don't join it to a domain.  I have never had a problem with it, however I don't like leaving my password in the customization spec so I usually leave the customization to leave them in a workgroup and then go back later on and join them to the domain.  I know it is an extra step, but I am a little crazy like that.  I do have a couple of customers that leave it embedded in there.  So no big deal either way, just a personal choice.

I am concerned about using a customization specification when deploying a guest from a template and joining a guest to an AD domain.

Independent of VMware I have been reading about Microsoft sysprep in general and I understand an administrator password may be stored in the registry and in a password file when using sysprep and answer files.

After deploying a guest from a template I searched for a sysprep.inf file. I cannot find it. So this is good.

Does anyone have some insight into this issue/concern with VMware?

Can you cam email me privately at im822@matocha.net

Unfortunately you can't in 3.5.  You can in 4.0 and higher.

Is there any way to set up DRS rule to keep 3 servers on separate hosts?
For some reason it is only letting me add 2 servers to a rule. We have 4 ESX 3.5 hosts.

I need someone for a 3 month VMware engagement.  It would consist of a VMware implementation at 2 sites.  Install and configure 2 Dell SANs.  Install 4 ESX hosts.  P2V about 250 Virtual Machines.  Install and Configure SRM.

This will then be followed up with several operating system and application upgrades.  They are currently running Exchange 2003, numerous Windows 2000 boxes, and much more.  Could be quite a bit of work long term.

I was running Hyper-V with about 8 VMs on it.  Only running 4-5 at one time.  The server was a Dell 1950 with about 4GB of RAM.  I tried converting the VM to run on ESX and couldn't get it done.  I gave up without much of a fight though.  Some interesting tidbits.

1.  You can't go directly to the vhd files and convert it with VMware converter.  That only works on Virtual PC and Virtual Server.
2.  I ran the VMware converter from inside of the VM (after I created a VMkernel and Service console port on my ESX hosts that could see that network).  It failed from inside of the VM.

Needless to say I gave up about here as I was just playing around anyway.

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