vSphere Upgrade from 5.1 to 6.0

[RajSwarnkar]

Hi

We have a VMWare setup with 2 Nodes as below.

1. Physical Machine - Windows Server 2008 With vCenter 5.1

2. 2 Physical Hosts Running ESXi 5.1.0 HP Custom

We would like to upgrade the setup to 6.0 version with the conditions.

A. System is live & running 6 Virtual Machine, a minimum downtime is needed.

B. What should be the sequence for upgrade, first vCenter upgrade or ESX

C. Could we move all VMs to one ESX & upgrade the setup with 1 vCenter & 1 Node, then move all VMs to upgraded setup & then upgrade the rest & add to the cluster.

Kindly guide.

Thanks a lot!

[rcporto]

A. System is live & running 6 Virtual Machine, a minimum downtime is needed.

Assuming you can migrate virtual machines between host, no downtime will be required if all virtual machine can be hosted in a single host.

B. What should be the sequence for upgrade, first vCenter upgrade or ESX

The vCenter should be upgraded first, and then the ESXi hosts. And my recommendation is to use vCenter as a virtual machine instead of a physical machine.

C. Could we move all VMs to one ESX & upgrade the setup with 1 vCenter & 1 Node, then move all VMs to upgraded setup & then upgrade the rest & add to the cluster.

The steps will be, upgrade your vCenter, move all VMs from one host, upgrade that host, move all virtual machine from to the new upgraded host and then upgrade the last host.

Again, instead of upgrade your physical vCenter, deploy a new vCenter in a virtual machine, and move your hosts to the new vCenter virtual machine.