Replacing hosts and upgrading from 5.1 to 5.5

[kalora]

Hi,

We are replacing our Dell R710s with R720s. We have two servers, both acting as hosts in an ESXI 5.1 environment. Storage is a DELL MD3200 and MD1200. VCentre is installed on another physical server. I would greatly appreciate some guidance on how to replace the two current hosts (R710s) with the new ones (R720s) and migrate the references to the VMs and recreate the cluster.

Both new servers have ESXI 5.5 installed and are patched and ready.I will also need to upgrade VCentre on the physical server. What is the workflow I should be following to accomplish replacing the old host servers with the new ones? is it something like:

1. Upgrade VCentre
2. Power of the VMs
3. Disconnect and power down current servers (hosts)
4. Install new servers (hosts)
5. Power on new hosts
6. Add new hosts to VCentre
7. ????
8. ????

   I can see from running "vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms" that the vmx configuration files for each VM are stored on the MD storage, so do I need to copy anything from the current hosts to the new hosts? It is not possible to connect to the new hosts to the storage at the same time as the old hosts, so I will need to copy whatever I need off before powering down and replacing the hosts.

Sorry if this is a little sketchy, any help much appreciated.

Kind Regards

Matt

[RubyIvy]

Hi,

I am not sure if you have a shared storage like SAN or NFS so that you can have your vm's there without any issues and can replace ESXi , if not then :

1. Make sure that two existing ESXi's are in a cluster.

2. Empty one host i.e. -> Power down the vm's and cold migrate to second host.

3.disconnect and remove first host from VC.

4. Add first new host to the cluster.

5. Cold migrate the vm from existing host to this new host and re[peat the same step for other host

[markdjones82]

Can all 4 hosts be connected to the MD3200 at the same time or only a couple at a time?  If  they can all be connected and see the storage, I would just register the new hosts and do a Vmotion if you can or power off and cold migrate if you can't vmotion.

If you can't have all 4 attached.  you will want to disconnect hosts/remove from inventory which will remove all objects.  Then add in your hosts, attach storage, browse the datastore and add your VM's by going to folders and add to inventory.

Might need a little more details on how the storage is setup.

[kalora]

Hi, thank you kindly for your suggestions. Yes we have shared storage, but it is not possible to connect all hosts at the same time.

Your idea of replacing one host at a time after migrating all the VMs to the other host and then migrating back to the new host is a great one! That makes perfect sense

I will consider this to be my best cause of action, as it seems like it will work well.

Thanks again

Matt