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BartosikR
Contributor
Contributor

Upgrade Vmware 5.0 to Vmware 5.5

  Hello -

I am attempting to migrate our current Vmware 5.0 (1x VCenter Server, 3x 5.0 ESXi 5.0 Hosts) to a new Vmware 5.5 environment on new hardware. We have 28 VMs in the current 5.0 environment with HA and DRS Enabled.

What is the best way with minimal downtime to migrate the 5.0 VCenter Server and VMs to the 5.5 environment?

Should I do an inplace upgrade to 5.5 then Migrate the VMs?

or

Upgrade VCenter server to 5.5 first and then Migrate the VMs?

or

Should I do the above and then add the 5.5 Hosts to the 5.0 environment and move the VMs Host by Host?

Any help or direction would be appreciated.

Thanks,

11 Replies
rcporto
Leadership
Leadership

First you should upgrade your vCenter server to version 5.5 and then upgrade your hosts to version 5.5.

To upgrade your host to version 5.5, first migrate your VMs to another host in the cluster and upgrade to version 5,5, using the Update Manager or using the Interactive Installer choose the option to upgrade.

---

Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

Welcome to the Community - as already mentioned upgrade vcenter first than the hosts - for more detailed information check out the upgrade guide -http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-552-upgrad...

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BartosikR
Contributor
Contributor

Hi! Thanks for your replay.

So if I understand, you are recommending we upgrade our current 5.0 environment (VCenter server 1st) to 5.5 then Migrate the VCenter Server and all VMs to the new 5.5 environment on new hardware?

Thanks,

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

I did such an upgrade for a customer just last week. They had vCenter Server 5.0 installed on Windows 2008 R2 with an SQL Server 2008 Express database.

What I did was to upgrade vCenter Server by installing each of the 5.5 component one after the other, and - after this was done - I installed the new ESXi hosts and added them to vCenter Server. In my case I configured EVC to support both, the old and the new hosts, which allowed me to add the new hosts to the existing cluster. After migrating the VMs to the new hosts, the old hosts were removed. Upgrading VMware Tools and the virtual hardware version will be done by the customer during maintenance windows.

André

BartosikR
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Andre!

Sorry what do you mean by "each of the components"?

After you upgraded the 5.0 VCenter, you added each of the 5.5 Hosts to the 5.0 environment then (when you enable EVH, DRS, HA) you can move the VMs from the old Hosts to the new Hosts?

Did you Graft the 5.5 Hosts to 5.0?

Then when the old Hosts have been evacuated, they can be removed from VCenter?

In simple terms that's it?

Thanks,

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Sorry what do you mean by "each of the components"?

What I meant is that I didn't use the "Simple Install" option from the setup screen, but did the "Custom Install". Btw. some of the installations require a few minutes to actually launch after you clicked the "Install" button, so please be patient to not launch the same installation twice.

... you can move the VMs from the old Hosts to the new Hosts?

Yes, the host version doesn't matter. You can migrate VMs from 5.0 hosts to 5.5 hosts and vice versa if the CPU (as well as the configuration, e.g. networking) is compatible.

Then when the old Hosts have been evacuated, they can be removed from VCenter?

Yes. Removing the old hosts from vCenter Server will also free up the licenses which you can then assign to the new hosts.

In simple terms that's it?

Yes.Unless something unexpected happens, the migration can be done without downtime, except for VMware Tools and Hardware Upgrades, which can be done later.

André

BartosikR
Contributor
Contributor

Hi!

Thanks. That was most helpful.

Did you choose to Graft when you went through the Migrate process?

Thanks,

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Sorry, but I don't exactly understand what you mean with "Graft". Can you please explain?

What I did - after adding the new hosts to the cluster - was to vMotion (live migrate) the VMs from the old hosts to the new ones.


André

williambishop
Expert
Expert

Do you mean graft as in resource pools?

--"Non Temetis Messor."
BartosikR
Contributor
Contributor

Hi - Yes I meant that when you run the Add Host wizard there is a choice of -

Put all of this Host's Virtual Machines in the cluster' root resource pool.

or

Create a new resource pool for this hosts virtual machines and resource pools.

Not sure which to choose. Since I am adding a NEW 5.5 Host that has no VMs to a 5.0 Cluster for the migration I am guessing that 1 is the way to go?

Thanks,

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

You can ignore the question about the resource pool when adding a new host without VMs.

André

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