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Joschide
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Best way to do this?

I have the following tasks to complete and wanted to find out what the best approach would be to minimize downtime.

Tasks:

1.)     Replace current drives with new, larger format drives.

2.)     Changing RAID configuration from 6 to 10.

3.)     Upgrade from ESXi 5.1 to latest version.

Notes:

1.)     On this host I have 3 windows server 2012 that are going back on the new setup.

2.)     I have another Host running ESXi 5.1 at my disposal.

Any suggestions would be helpful!

I'm considering:

1.)     copy vm clients to spare host using converter.

2.)     replace drives and configure RAID

3.)     Install latest ESXi fresh.

4.)     copy vm clients from spare host to new host using converter.

Would this be the simplest way?

Thank you & Happy New Year!

Message was edited by: Joschide

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weinstein5
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You could - depnding on the size of the VM you might not have enough space -

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weinstein5
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Without shared storage what your propose would be the easiest way - If you have a spare machine with disk space you might wet up a temporary NAS share to move the VMs to -

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Joschide
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Share storage could be windows server or workstation, correct?  Would I copy the entire directory from the datastore?  After the updates, how would I add the clients to the inventory?

Thank you

will373794
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server 2012 can do nfs or iscsi which both supported by vmware. First you need to create a datastore on shared storage. You then just need to copy the vm folders from local to shared storage. Remove VMs from host being upgraded and add them to the other host. Once you done reverse the process. Downtime would be period of VMs being moved between datastores depends on size of the VMs. You shouldnt need to use converter since both hosts are 5.x.

Joschide
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Last question.  Could I download the vm folder to my local windows 7 machine using vSphere client?  Then upload after the changes are made?

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weinstein5
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You could - depnding on the size of the VM you might not have enough space -

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ramkrishna1
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Hi

Welcome to the communities.

If you have extra hardware \server then follow live migration

where your downtime will be equal to zero .

http://www.vmware.com/in/products/vsphere/features/vmotion.html

Take care!