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elcore
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Migrate VMs from ESX 4.0 to ESXi 5.5

Hi All,

What would be the best way to migrate VM's running under ESX 4.0 cluster to a new ESXi 5.5 Cluster.

According to me there are two ways of doing it:

  1. Map the LUNs (VMFS3) to the new ESXi 5.5 cluster
    1. Shut the VM's under Old cluster
    2. Remove from Inventory under Old cluster
    3. Add the VMFS3 LUN under New Cluster
    4. Add the server to Inventory
    5. Power on the VMs
    6. Possibly svMotion the VM from VMFS3 to new VMFS5 Datastore.
  2. Migrate the VM's via Vmware Standalone Converter to new Cluster.

I believe method 1 would be the most quickest one, but i doubt whether it is really practical especially considering that the same LUN/datastore will be writable by 2 different versions of ESX 4.0 and 5.5 simultaneously.

And Method 2 seems to me  the best way forward as it will give me a possiblity of starting the VM on the old cluster if the V2V conversion fails or the destination vm has any issues.

Along with above I also considered possible vmotion, by adding the old ESX 4.0 hosts under the ESXi 5.5 Cluster but the Intel Xeon CPUs are quite old and not fit for vmotion, thought of enabling EVC too but for that i will have to bring the new servers CPU down  to the level of old servers CPU and post migration will have to shut all VM's to bring all the new servers to their optimum level by disabling EVC.

So could anyone please guide which would be the best way, as we are planning to migrate around 150 vms. Thanks.

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joshopper
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between steps 1 and 2 take new backups just in case. You don't need to have them both writable to each cluster between steps 2 and 3 remove the volume from the old cluster. Also, between steps 4 and 5 you can cold migrate them from the old storage to the new.

-J

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rcporto
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The method 1 should work fine, but to mitigate issues check if your storage is on HCL for version 5.5.

---

Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
joshopper
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between steps 1 and 2 take new backups just in case. You don't need to have them both writable to each cluster between steps 2 and 3 remove the volume from the old cluster. Also, between steps 4 and 5 you can cold migrate them from the old storage to the new.

-J

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elcore
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Thanks Richardson, Storage is supported under HCL Smiley Happy

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elcore
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Thanks J, I will add the steps you mentioned.

Just one more query, you mentioned VM can be cold migrated, coldvm migrate do i need to have portgroup labels similar to one under ESX 4.0 or it is not required for coldvm migrate?

Thanks again!

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npadmani
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No need to have same port group name present in target host when you do cold migration.

but, you got to then manually point vNIC of that cold migrated VM to different port group in your target host.

Narendra Padmani VCIX6-DCV | VCIX7-CMA | VCI | TOGAF 9 Certified
elcore
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Thanks a lot Narendra Smiley Happy

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