HA between different Esxi versions

[enkidoe]

Is it posible to create HA between esxi 3.5 and 5? If so, what can i do, what cant and what specific  requirements should i look after?

thanks all

[christianZ]

Hi,

that won't be working.

Reg

Christian

[marcelo_soares]

ESX 3.5 and ESX 5 have totally different HA mechanisms. I would recomment have both ESX on the same version if you are planning to use HA.

[a_p_]

I don't see a reason why this shouldn't work. As long as the VM's are compatible with ESXi 3.5 (e.g. HW version 4) they can be powered on in both versions. According to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix, ESXi 3.5 Update 5 hosts are supported with vCenter Server 5.

André

[christianZ]

The reason could be the different vmfs version 5 and 3 ?

Don't ever seen or heard of such configuration in production - I don't think it would be supported by vmware.

Reg

Christian

[a_p_]

The reason could be the different vmfs version 5 and 3 ?

I agree, but upgrading a shared datastore to VMFS-5 would certainly be a self-introduced issue

I checked to documentation regarding compatibility real quick and what I found is:

http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-esx-vcenter-server-50-release-notes.html

vCenter Server 5.0 can manage ESXi 5.0 hosts in the same cluster with  ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts. It can also manage ESX/ESXi 3.5  hosts in the same cluster with ESX/ESXi 4.x hosts. vCenter Server 5.0  cannot manage ESX 2.x or 3.0.x hosts.

André

[DeepakNegi420]

ESX 3.5 and 4.1 can be comined with HA enviornment because The HA agent ( AAM ) is same in the versions 3.5 and 4.1  with 5 primary nodes and rest secondary nodes but Esxi 5 has HA agent (FDM ) each node is primary and both AAM and FDM agent are different. so you can't mix esxi 3.5 with esxi 5

Instead you can create seperate clusters for example Cluster A contains Esx 3.5 and Esxi 4.1  and Cluster B contains ESx 5

Thank you,

Deepak Negi

VCP 4.1, VCP 5

[marcelo_soares · Accepted solution]

Digging a little bit, found out ANdré is right and I was wrong. I was also thinking by the AAM x FDM difference, but this is related to the vCenter version NOT to the ESX versions. vCenter until 4.1 installs aam on ESX, and vCenter 5 installs FDM.

As per availability doc: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-availab... page 24:

NOTE ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts are supported by vSphere HA but must include a patch to address an issue
involving file locks. For ESX 3.5 hosts, you must apply the patch ESX350-201012401-SG, while for ESXi 3.5
you must apply the patch ESXe350-201012401-I-BG. Prerequisite patches need to be applied before
applying these patches.

These patches are required so the ESX 3.5 is able to run the FDM sent by vCenter.

Sorry enkidoe for the wrong information. Thanks Andre for the light.

[christianZ]

Ok I give up - that would work. But to me it makes no sense. You can't use the new features, e.g. vmfs 5 or vm hardware version 8.

Anyway Andre and Marcelo - good work

Reg

Christian

[enkidoe]

thanks all for the reply.

The reason why i am asking this is the following:

we are goin to open a new location.

Our main location has esx3.5, the new location will offcourse be 5.0. First i thought i had to migrate the existing 3.5 to version 5, but after your replies i can keep it on 3.5

I would like to create a high availability configuration between both locations to be prepared when something might happen(fire or so).

The only problem is that i dont know to figure out how to impelment the storage and the cluster/datastore part.

What would be wise; 1 datastore, 1 cluster and on both sites the storage?

I would love to find some cases about implementing HA because the information i got now is just pure techical information. For instance, it doesn't tell me how the vm's on 1 site get to the other site(shoul i copy them) and ho they stay up to date(my offline server hasn't got the same ad version).

[christianZ]

Hi,

for fire or similar you should mirror your datastore to the second location also (what you need is Disaster recovery)

Having only an Esx host on the second location won't give you any full redundancy.

Reg

Christian

[marcelo_soares]

This is what VMware SRM does. Unless you find a way to access the datastores on the A location from the B location (like dark fiber, or a very low latency network link for iSCSI) you will need storage replication.

Already did iSCSI over a 100mbit WAN link, and I can tell you: don't run more than 1 VM on it, and don't expect performance - and wait for IO issues

[enkidoe]

can yougive me some more ifnoa bout the disaster recovery part?

[enkidoe]

so, i should implement site recovery??

[christianZ]

Well for SRM you need any kind of storage mirroring first (supported by vmware) and the same version of esx on both sites.

That is a feature for enterprise class - so not cheap.

Reg

Christian

[christianZ]

In addition FYI

The new Site recovery manager 5 (SRM) includes some kind of vm replication, so you don't need storage replication/mirroring anymore.

Reg

Christian