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PS3ALI
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Preparing of Migration to 6.5 U2

Hello Experts ,

I have some questions about our Migration from 5.5 to 6.5 .we will replace  our virtuel datacenter equipements with new ones .

our Vcenter 5.5  is in our old domain x.local and the new one will be in our new domain y.com.

our ESXi 5.5 are not joined to the Domain .the authentication is locally and they use the DNS of our old domain x.local

before migrating to 6.5 with new Domain y.com , i would migrate our Vcenter 5.5 from x.local to y.com

Could you tel me the steps please ? i'm afraid if there will an impact to our VMS

Regards

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VysakhNair
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

PS3ALI

Are you deploying new vCenter Server 6.5 in your new infrastructure ?

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your question have been answered correctly. Vysakh Nair Blog - https://www.vxpert.in
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vXav
Expert
Expert

There are quite a few changes going on here.

I think I would try the following:

  1. Deploy a new vCenter 6.5 and pair it with the new domain
  2. Have a forwarding between old and new dns or add the old one as secondary on the new vCenter and the new one as secondary on the hosts.
  3. Check that the hosts can resolve the new vCenter and vice versa.
  4. Disconnect the hosts one by one and move them to the new vCenter (registered with fqdn or ip)
  5. Evacuate the hosts one by one and reinstall them in 6.5 with new DNS only.
  6. Once finished remove old dns from vCenter

Haven't tried it so you may want to test first.

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PS3ALI
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

YES

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VysakhNair
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

PS3ALI

So You can deploy new vCenter in new Domain and can select any one of below solution to migrate VMs to new infrastructure

1. Map the old storage to new ESXi blades in new vCenter

2. Create required network configuration required for your VMs

3. Take VM downtime one by one

4. Power Off Old VM and remove from inventory

5. Browse datastore from new vCenter and add to inventory

6. Make required network changes and power on the VM

OR

1. If you using distributed switch in old environment migrate hosts and VMs to standard switch

2. Remove hosts from old vCenter

3. Add ESXi to new vCenter

4. Map old Storage to new ESXi blades - else you need to do cold vMotion which may cause more downtime

5. After mapping storage Power Off VM and migrate to new ESXi host

6.  Make required network changes and power on the VM

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your question have been answered correctly. Vysakh Nair Blog - https://www.vxpert.in
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jburen
Expert
Expert

If you are installing a new vCenter (appliance I assume) you can disconnect the ESXi hosts from the old vCenter. This would not impact the running VMs as long as you are using Standard Switches. Then connect the hosts to the new vCenter and when you have al your hosts migrated you can perform the upgrade of the hosts. Another option is to perform a cross vCenter migration with the Move-VM cmdlet. Or use the fling: Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility | VMware Flings

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NathanosBlightc
Commander
Commander

First of all, please check your physical server's compatibility with the ESXi 6.5 u2 in the VMware Compatibility Guide  Then if everything is fine, you can choose which method of VI migration:

  1. Upgrade the vCenter Server and then the ESXi hosts. So you can check the VMware interoperability Guide for more information about the direct upgrade path possibility.
  2. Install another vCenter Server, then do whatever you need.

So when you upgrade the vCenter Server successfully, you can do like the following checklist:

  1. Create required virtual data centers.
  2. Construct the ESXi clusters and configure the HA, DRS and whatever the infrastructure required.
  3. Upgrade the ESXi hosts in which of the following methods:
    1. Configure the VMware Update Manager in the new vCenter Server and then use it for upgrade operations.
    2. Upgrade the ESXi hosts manually via ESXCLI command-lines or via a physical media like USB disk.

After successfully putting all hosts in the new Clusters, you can try to upgrade the VMware Tools on each of virtual machines.

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
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gilbertoscar33
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Contributor

Preparing for the vCenter appliance upgrade. First, create a snapshot for your existing vCenter server. If you have disk space available, make ...Harveys Supermarket Survey

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