Altostratus
NimbostratusHello,
I believe that setting a guest to Provisioned gracefully shuts down the guest (which is why it's necessary), but that also setting it to Configured de-allocates system resources from the guest (such as CPUs and mounted disk images). When I upgrade our hosts, I first set the guests to Provisioned (one at a time as we have 2100 model blades), then set them to Configured.
An added bonus of setting the guest to Configured, is that you can change the guest's base image at that time. This is useful for major code upgrades so the guest doesn't revert to an older version (I have had this happen to me).
Hope this helps!
EmployeeThis is as you have stated above, all of it. In fact, it is recommended that when code upgrades that you DO change the initial software version and the initial hotfix version to the version running now. This is the setting that tells the vCMP subsystem what images to build a guest as when it builds teh guest again (should it need to). This is especially important on Viprion Chassis where the guest may beed to span to a new blade due to a blade failure. Otherwise the guest gets built with the incorrect software version and when the configuration is sent to the new guest, it may not load properly. (read probably not at all into that last bit)