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raindown388
Contributor
Contributor

Migration of VMs from ESXi 5.1 to 6.5

Hello VMWare folks!

We are planning to upgrade our infrastructure to ESXi & vCenter version 6.5. However, I'm trying to find the best approach to migrate the virtual machines off the old environment to the new environment. Here is a layout of the old and new infrastructure:

OLD:

3 ESXi 5.1 Hosts in a cluster, connected to a Dell MD3600i SAN and managed by vCenter Server version 5.5.

NEW:

3 ESXi 6.5 Hosts in a cluster, connected to a Netapp FAS2650 SAN and managed by vCenter Server version 6.5.

We have the Essentials Plus license.

I have read that a cross vCenter migration is possible, given that both vCenter servers are at version 6 or above. Given this, would 5.1 machines be able to migrate to the 6.5 environment this method? Also, another possible way would be to get a trial key and add both old and new hosts into a cluster and add both old & new SANs and use Storage vMotion.

What would be the best approach here?

TIA!

7 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

vCenter 6.5 cannot manage ESXi hosts less than version 5.5, so you will first need to upgrade those hosts to at least 5.5 before you can join them to a vCenter 6.5.

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raindown388
Contributor
Contributor

Hi daphnissov,

Thanks for the input. We also have Veeam B&R. Could we replicate/restore the Virtual Machines from the 5.1 environment to the 6.5 environment? Would there be any issues surrounding that?

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

You could probably do that (or just use Quick Migrate) as I've done it before in migrations, but that's obviously going to require some downtime for the switch-over. If you needed a non-disruptive way to migrate those VMs, you may just want to consider upgrading those ESXi 5.1 hosts to 5.5, swing them over, then use vCenter to orchestrate a "shared nothing" migration to the target cluster. Keep in mind you will still need vMotion network connectivity between old and new hosts if you wish to use this method as well as CPU compatibility.

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bspagna89
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

I just had to do one of these recently. The approach I took was to connect the old SAN to the new ESXi hosts. So the end result looks like this :

old esxi hosts + old san. This stays the same.

New ESXi hosts connected to New SAN + Old SAN. The only issue here is, you would need to power down and remove the VMs from inventory. Add them to inventory on the new hosts, and then perform a storage vMotion over to the new SAN. This was the easiest and cleanest method for my scenario. It sounds like it could work for your scenario as well.

Let me know what you think.

New blog - https://virtualizeme.org/
CoolRam
Expert
Expert

This plan is looks good but  you can also write a simple workflow using powercli to migrate workload in cross vCenter

. https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/12/bulk-vm-migration-using-new-cross-vcenter-vmotion-utility-fl... . But to do that you need to upgrade your 5.1 environment.

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

CoolRam​, you cannot use that Fling to migrate between a vCenter 5.5 and a vCenter 6.5.

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CoolRam
Expert
Expert

Yeah,but he can upgrade the environment than we can try this fling.

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