Migrating from esxi5.1 to esxi 6

[habs3]

Hi

I am looking a doing a migration of our current infrastructure esxi5.1update2 to esxi6 and had a few questions i was looking for some insight to.

The esxi 6 is a greenfield environment and i want to move some of the hosts from the current environment to the new environment.

After i move the host and upgrade tehm to esxi 6, are there any changes that happen to the shared datastores?

Should i do a move to new datastores and hosts.

other than shared nothing or offline migration is there a way to get VMs from the old environment to the new vcenter 6? A way for no downtime to the VMs?

Any help would be great or a pointer to an article or 2 would be very helpful.

Thank you for the help

[IBM_India]

Upgrade Options for ESXi 6.0

VMware provides several ways to upgrade ESXi 5.x hosts to ESXi 6.0 hosts.

vSphere Update Manager	vSphere Update Manager is software for upgrading, migrating, updating, and patching clustered hosts, virtual machines, and guest operating systems. vSphere Update Manager orchestrates host and virtual machine upgrades. If your site uses vCenter Server, VMware recommends that you use vSphere Update Manager. For instructions about performing an orchestrated host upgrade, see Using vSphere Update Manager to Perform Orchestrated Host Upgrades. For instructions about performing an orchestrated virtual machine upgrade, see the Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager documentation.
Upgrade interactively by using an ESXi installer ISO image on CD/DVD or USB flash drive	You can run the ESXi 6.0 installer from a CD/DVD or USB flash drive to do an interactive upgrade. This method is appropriate for deployments with a small number of hosts. The installer works the same as for a fresh installation, but if you select a target disk that already contains an ESXi 5.0.x,ESXi 5.1.x, or ESXi 5.5.x installation, the installer upgrades the host to 6.0. The installer also gives you the option to migrate some existing host settings and configuration files and to preserve the existing VMFS datastore. See Upgrade Hosts Interactively.
Perform a scripted upgrade	You can upgrade hosts from  ESXi 5.0.x, ESXi 5.1.x, and ESXi 5.5.x to ESXi 6.0 by running an update script for an efficient, unattended upgrade. Scripted upgrades provide an efficient way to deploy multiple hosts. You can use a script to upgrade ESXi from a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, or by specifying a preboot execution environment (PXE) for the installer. You can also call a script from an interactive installation. See Installing or Upgrading Hosts by Using a Script.
vSphere Auto Deploy	After an ESXi 5.x host is deployed with vSphere Auto Deploy, you can use vSphere Auto Deploy to reprovision the host and reboot it with a new image profile. This profile contains an ESXi upgrade or patch, a host configuration profile, and optionally, third-party drivers or management agents that are provided by VMware partners. You can build custom images by using vSphere ESXi Image Builder CLI. See Using vSphere Auto Deploy to Reprovision Hosts.
esxcli	You can use the esxcli command-line utility for ESXi to upgrade ESXi 5.0.x hosts, ESXi 5.1.x hosts, or ESXi 5.5.x hosts to ESXi 6.0 hosts.

The esxupdate and vihostupdate utilities are not supported for ESXi 6.0 upgrades.

Upgrade Method	Upgrade from ESXi 5.0.x to ESXi 6.0	Upgrade from ESXi 5.1.x to ESXi 6.0	Upgrade from ESXi 5.5.x to ESXi 6.0
vSphere Update Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
Interactive upgrade from CD, DVD, or USB drive	Yes	Yes	Yes
Scripted upgrade	Yes	Yes	Yes
vSphere Auto Deploy	Yes, if the ESXi 5.0.x host was deployed by using vSphere Auto Deploy	Yes, if the ESXi 5.1.x host was deployed by using vSphere Auto Deploy	Yes, if the ESXi 5.5.x host was deployed by using vSphere Auto Deploy
esxcli command-line utility	Yes	Yes	Yes

See this Video to UPdate ESXi

How-to upgrade from ESXi 5.1 to ESXi 6.0 via Command Line - YouTube

no downtime for VM you migrate VM on other host.

[haripadmam]

Hi, regarding shared storage, its better if you create new LUN for your ESXi 6 hosts instead of sharing LUN between old and new infra and running VMs at both setup.

Once you have your new setup ready with dedicated LUN, I believe you can do migration with storage vMotion to your vSphere 6 platform. I have done similar migration eliminating VM downtime but that is for vSphere 5.0 to 5.5. I'm not sure if it will work for your scenario. May be you can wait for comments from other folks.

All the Best!

Best Regards,

Hari.

[sakthivelramali]

Hi..VMware having Knowledge Base (KB) 2109711 for upgrading to VMware ESXi 6.0.Please refer

Thanks

[SARAVANAN_O]

Hi

VMware provides several ways to upgrade ESX/ESXi hosts:

• vSphere Update Manager
• Interactively using an ESXi installer ISO image
• Scripted upgrade
• vSphere Auto Deploy
• ESXi Command-line interface

Thanks

[ch1ta]

If you have Veeam B&R Free you can also try this approach.

Cheers.

[jagdish_rana]

Hi There,

Could you please confirm about cluster config with host number.

Thanks