Upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.5

[Mukz9]

Hi,

I have a requirement to upgrade the existing environment from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.5.

The existing ESX 4.1  environment comprises of 21 ESX hosts, running on ESX 4.1.0 (build-800380) and 1 ESX host running on ESX 4.1.0 (build-260247). These hosts are spread across different clusters and managed by a single vCenter Server running on vCenter server 4.1.0 build - 925676.

The vCenter Server configuration is as below.

vCenter Server version - vCenter server 4.1.0 build - 925676.

Guest Operating System - Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2, Standard Edition (64-bit).

2 CPUs  - Intel Xeon X5550 @ 2.67 GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads

Memory - 12 GB

Database - SQL Server 2005 SP3. This is a bundled Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express database that comes along with the ESX 4.1 installation.

From the VMware upgrade guide, I understand that direct in-place upgrade is supported for upgrading the vCenter Server from 4.1 to vCenter 5.5. However, from the VMware interoperability matrix, vCenter Server 5.5 is compatible with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition SP4 and not with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3.

So, will the in-place upgrade process work for the above configuration, where the database is running on one of the unsupported database version for vCenter Server 5.5? If so, will the upgrade process also take care of the existing database by upgrading the database schema to be in compatible with vCenter Server 5.5?

With the database version limitation, I believe it would be better to perform a fresh install of vCenter Server 5.5 on another server and then migrate the ESX 4.1 hosts to the new vCenter Server 5.5. Once the ESX hosts are migrated to vCenter server 5.5, upgrade the ESX version from ESX 4.1 to ESX 5.5 for each of the hosts.

For the given vCenter Server configuration, can someone please recommend which method will be more suitable - in-place upgrade or installing a new vCenter Server on a separate server?

Thanks,

Mukz

[rcporto]

First, take in mind that vCenter Server with SQL Express is recommended for environment size with 5 hosts and 50 virtual machines... and I believe that you're already above this numbers... so what about consider deploy the vCenter Server Appliance with embedded database that will support 100 hosts and 3000 virtual machines? And then move the hosts from the old vCenter to the new one according with the following KB article: How to move ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another (1004775) | VMware KB

[BenLiebowitz]

Once you're at 5.5, think about using the new Migration tool to move from Windows vCenter 5.5 to the VCSA 6.0!

vCenter Server Migration Tool: vSphere 6.0 Update 2m - VMware vSphere Blog

[Mukz9]

Thank you, Richardson. I will consider vCenter Server Appliance with embedded database.

However, I was curious to know how the in-place upgrade process handles bundled database of the existing vCenter Server, while upgrading to a new vCenter Server version. For example, in this case the bundled database of vCenter Server 4.1 is running on Microsoft SQL 2005 SP3 version, which is not compatible to vCenter Server 5.5. So, during the in-place upgrade process from vCenter Server 4.1 to vCenter Server 5.5, is the existing database schema upgraded  for it to be compatible with vCenter Server 5.5? or the in-place upgrade process will not work in cases where the database version of the existing vCenter Server is not compatible with the upgraded version of the target vCenter Server?

Thanks,

Mukund

[Mukz9]

Thank you, Ben. This information is useful. We will consider this for future upgrade requirement to VCSA 6.