Should I just start all over? Converting from 4.1 to 5.5

[HMorris]

We are about to convert from VSphere 4.1  to 5.5. We are very small with only 3 hosts running about 20 guest VM's on a SAN.  Our VCenter VM is still on Win 2003 and I know I have to upgrade it to W2K8.

Also. I just purchased a new Dell server that is still in the box with no OS.

My question is this. Rather than doing an upgrade from 4.1 to 5.5 and converting vcenter,  should I just complete a new installation of VSphere 5.5 to the new server.   With a brand new Vcenter install as well? Then manually move the existing servers into the new Vcenter setup. 

My thoughts were to move over the guests from an existing host to the new box and then wipe and reload each older host with 5.5

Does this sound logical or am I making this harder than it needs to be?

Thanks in advance.

HMorris

[vThinkBeyondVM · Accepted solution]

Your plan looks good to me.

  - Install new brand vCenter with new DB : If you care about historical/performance data then you can connect new vCenter with old DB.

- Install latest ESXi 5.5. on new box & attach same storage as old ESXi to this host

- Add new ESXi host into new vCenter

- Add old ESXi to new vCenter.

- Configure vMotion network and migrate all your VMs to new ESXi from old ESXi host.

- Remove ESXi host from new vCenter and fresh install latest ESXi 5.5

- Add again back to new vCenter.

As your environment is small, you may want to go for embedded DB itself & You can go for vCenter Virtual appliance instead of  windows vCenter server as its easy to deploy.

If you want upgrade : Refer

:http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=205313...

upgrade vCenter from 4.1 to 5.5 best practice

Upgrading vCenter 4.1 to 5.5 - Lessons learned - Popping Clouds

Upgrade: vSphere 4.1 to 5.5 | My Life in IT

[HMorris]

That sounds good.  I'll go with that plan.

Thanks much.

HMorris

[HMorris]

I have one more question with this scenario.   I think it's a dumb question but I'll ask anyhow.

During the changeover from VCenter 4.1 to the new VCenter appliance 5.5. I will be running both VCenter's (ver 4.1 and ver 5.5) simultaneously for a short period.  One host will drop off and be added to the new VCenter.  But I will be sharing my only SAN of course.  If I am doing this and running  both versions of VCenter (old and new) at the same time and sharing my same SAN datastores at the same time,  is there any problems with doing this?

I added the first new esxi host that I have already pointed to my only SAN datastores, no problems. And the datstores appeared as they should.  But wen I add this new host to the new VCenter,  as part of the setup process it displays all the relevant San datastores.  I thought this was odd to show during the VCenter addition process.  Are there any restrictions to running two different VCenter VERSIONS at the same time on the same datastores  ?  

Thanks

HMorris

[vThinkBeyondVM]

There should not be any issue if you place vCenter VM (ie. VM files) across versions on the same datastore. They should work fine simultaneously as well.