upgrade/migration vcenter 5.1 to vcenter 6.0

[veasna2016]

Hello,

I am in process to migrate/upgrade vSphere 5.1 and vCenter 5.1 to vSphere 6.0 and vCenter 6.0. Here what I have    

hostesxi1 (approx. 50VM) manage by vcenter 5.1

hostesxi2 (approx. 100VM) manage by vcenter 5.1

hostesxi3 (approx 200VM) manage by vcenter 5.1

I have a fresh installation of vCenter 6.0 and vSphere 6.0. What is the best way for me to upgrade the 3 esxi5.1 and vcenter5.1 to esxi6 and vcenter6? How can I migrate to hosts and VMs?

Thanks,

[rcporto · Accepted solution]

You can move your ESXi hosts to the new vCenter 6.0 and than migrate the virtual machines to the new ESXi 6.0 hosts using the migration wizard. Note that move your hosts to the new vCenter can be done without downtime, but migrate your virtual machines from your old hosts to the new one may need some downtime if your new hosts have different CPU.

To see how to move ESXi between vCenters, see: Moving a managed ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another vCenter Server (1004775) | VMware ...

[veasna2016]

Hey Richardson,

I was told that vCenter 6.0 can't see the host on vCenter5.1 but based on your statement is no problem. Also, you said there is no downtime during migrate the host to new vCenter6, the arcticle said to disconnect first. What does it mean to "disconnect"? Is that mean all the VMs need to be poweroff.

Right-click the managed host icon in the inventory panel and select Disconnect (wait for the task to complete).

Thanks

[rcporto]

The "disconnect" will only disconnect the ESXi host from current vCenter but will leave all virtual machines running (since the virtual machines don't need a vCenter to run), so you don't need to power off the virtual machines.

[veasna2016]

Thank you so much. I will update the progress.

[veasna2016]

Is the vmware tools 5.1 is compatible with vmware tools 6.0?

[NetworkNerd]

The VMs running on your 5.1 ESXi hosts will have a specific version of VMware Tools that can be upgraded after you move them to the 6.0 hosts.  This difference in VMware Tools versions will not affect the ability of vCenter 6.0 to manage the hosts running ESXi 5.1 and the VMs on these hosts.

[veasna2016]

I have few hundred VMs, will the VM Tools work after migrate to vSphere 6.0 or do I have to ungrade the VMware Tools immediately after migration. My concern is if the VMware Tools 5.1 will not functioning properly then I need to upgrade all the VMs to the VMWARE Tools 6.0 immediately which require lot of servers reboot.

[rcporto]

Don't worry it will work but is recommended upgrade, see what VMware says: Is a VMware Tools Upgrade Required When Upgrading vSphere? - VMware vSphere Blog