VSphere 5.1 host migration

[dschro]

I am in the process of replacing the hosts in our current vsphere 5.1 cluster.  We are switching from AMD processors to Intel.

I have the new hosts setup as the same as the old hosts, except I have them setup with different IP addresses and host names.   I just want to make sure the plan I came up with will work.

1.  Move all the VM's to one host and shutdown one of the old hosts and remove it from the cluster.

2.  Add one of the new hosts to the cluster.

3.  Shutdown the VM's and cold boot them onto the new host.

4.  Remove the other old host from the cluster.

5.  Add the 2nd new host to the cluster.

The vcenter server is virtual, does anything need to be done with the that server other than start it up on the new hosts?

Would it be better to put the old hosts in maintenance mode and add the new hosts before removing them from the cluster?

Does it make a difference I give the new hosts different IP address and host names or would it be better to keep them the same?

Any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks.

[sneddo]

Honestly, I'd probably provision the new hosts in a new cluster, then just shut down the VM and migrate to the new cluster.

But, your plan looks pretty good in theory. I don't like the idea of having mixed architecture in your cluster (and DRS will just not work, but in theory HA should still). Changing hostname/IP does not matter one bit.

vCenter may be a little different, in that you may have to login directly to the host running it in the old cluster, shutdown  and remove it from inventory, and then browse the datastore on the new host and add it before powering on.

[hartehanks]

Hi dschro

just for my understanding

vmotion wouldnt work in this instance right ? , since its a intel to amd migration .

are you using veeam or something similar to move them across old to new hosts ?

[dschro]

No vmotion won't work.

I have completed this, it is shared storage on a SAN so I just added the new hosts to the existing cluster, shutdown the VM's and then migrated them to the new host and started them back up and then removed the old hosts.

[hartehanks]

Thanks