Migrating 5.5 to 6, but can I keep vCenter quarantined?

[DuaneMarcus]

I've inherited a 5.5 environment that has been poorly managed for several years. My plan to fix this includes creating a totally new vSphere environment (on new hardware). To avoid migrating any kind of who-knows-what undesirable data from the old vCenter, I would like to keep it clean by creating a new vCenter 6 server and migrate the existing VMs from the 5.5 environment (preferably) without ever connecting these two vCenters together. I've seen some people recommend Veeam's quick migration to do this - just connect both vCenters to Veeam and allow it to back up from the old vCenter and restore to the new. Is there a better and/or officially supported method of accomplishing this that doesn't involve exporting OVAs? Doesn't have to be a hot migration, though that would be nice.

Recommendations much appreciated.

[joshopper · Accepted solution]

The  simplest method is to shutdown your VMs in your 5.5 environment, remove them from inventory and then attach that shared storage to your new 6.x environment and add them to inventory and then migrate them to the new storage. You might get a challenge question when you add them to inventory asked if they have been moved or copied, just answer moved and carry on. You might want to have backups handy and make sure if your VMFS is an older version that when you attach it to the new cluster you do not upgrade it until all of the VMs have been moved to different storage.

[DuaneMarcus]

Our storage is new, so it would just be a matter of disconnecting each LUN and then reconnecting to the new. I have checked that all VMFS are at 5. Great suggestion; it will mean we have to batch VMs instead of doing one at a time, but this is doable within a few weeks of maintenance windows.

[uyozTic]

i apologize for intruding, the thread fits my question. if i need to make a new thread let me know.

would your solution apply to esxi 5.1 also?

my esxi 5.1 is on usb stick in "server" and data stores are on NAS, same home network. using vsphere to manage them.

i'm going to put ssd drives for data store in "server" and do away with vm's on the synology NAS. hoping your solution will work for 5.1 too

tia