New vCenter, ESXi Host and vSphere Upgrade

[Sean_Kane]

Hello Everyone,

I have a bit of an interesting situation I want to run past everyone. In one of my datacenters, I am going to be doing three things:

1. Installing a new vCenter 6.0 server on-site (old vCenter server is located in a geographically remote location)
2. Installing a brand new ESXi Host 6.0 (fresh out of the box Lenovo System x3550 M5)
3. Upgrading two existing ESXi Hosts from 5.1 to 6.0
4. Moving the existing ESXi hosts from a 5.1 vCenter to the new 6.0 vCenter

The goal is to: add a locally installed vCenter Server, add more resources (all VM's cannot run on one host at this time) and upgrade the environment to vSphere 6.0.

There are a lot of moving parts on this project, what are your thoughts on this process:

1. Create and configure a new vCenter 6.0 Server (Appliance)
2. Move the two existing ESXi 5.1 hosts from the old vCenter 5.1 Server to the new vCenter 6.0 Server
3. Install ESXi 5.1 on the brand new server and add that ESXi 5.1 server to the vCenter 6.0 Cluster
4. vMotion VM's from one 5.1 server to the two others, upgrade from 5.1 to 6.0
5. Repeat #4 two more times to upgrade all ESXi hosts to 6.0
6. All ESXi's are at 6.0 as well as the vCenter is now at 6.0

Does that "6 step plan" sound like a reasonable plan? I can't foresee any reason that it would not work the way I want.

Thanks in advance,

Sean

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

I assume your hardware is supported by ESXi 6.0.

In this case the plan is basically ok, although I'd install ESXi 6.0 on the new host in step 3. I don't see a reason why you would want to install ESXi 5.1 on the new host, and then upgrade it.

André

[thecloudxpert]

I concur with Andre, there should be a need to install esxi 5.1 on the new host.

You can perform an orchestrated upgrade of hosts from 5.1 to 6.0 using update manager.

Check out Perform an Orchestrated Upgrade of Hosts Using vSphere Update Manager

Chris

[Sean_Kane]

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your advice. The piece I was unsure about was whether or not I could run ESXi 6.0 on one host and then safely attach the datastores to the ESXi 6.0 Host which is shared with the ESXi 5.1 hosts. Though, I don't know why I was unsure about this given the fact that after I upgrade one of my hosts, I will then be running a mixed environment.

I will take your advice, keep ESXi 6.0 on the new hardware, move the 5.1 hosts to the new vCenter and then upgrade the 5.1 hosts to 6.0.

Many thanks for your advice!!!

Sean