Esxi with Dell R720 and R710

[hudanintra]

Hi,

I have New two server Dell R720 and planning in5stall with esxi 5.1.

My Existing Environmnet is 2 server Dell R710 with esxi 4.1 and vcenter 4.1.

1. Install upgrade vcenter 4.1 to 5.1

2. Install esxi 5.1 on dell r720

3. create new cluster for dell r720.

need your suggestion for best practice to move R710 to  my new cluster R720.

1. Upgrade 4.1 to 5.1 first or move it first to the new cluster with evc enable?

2. if my new cluster is already evc enable and i want to add new host, do i need to re-enable my evc?

3. can i upgrade 4.1 to 5.1 with evc enable?

4. For my new 2 Dell R720 server, how can i add the same datastore in the existing host R710 to the R720 host? (storage using FC)

Thanks

[tomtom901]

1) Do the vCenter upgrade first.

2) How do you mean this? You enable EVC on the cluster and it is therefore applied to all VM's in the cluster.

3) Do you mean vCenter or the hosts, either way, this shouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure if vCenter 4.1 holds all the new EVC modes.

4) Add and configure the HBA?

Also, use the Dell customized image, which is a bit better in terms of drivers:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=RD5JN

[Cyberfed27]

Upgrade first that's the most painful part (in some cases) the rest of your setup will be trivial.

Make sure you follow VMware's documentation for a smooth upgrade. The jump from 4.x to 5.x was HELL for a long time. Fortunately VMware has fixed a lot of the upgrade issues in the latest builds of vCenter. Goodluck.