VMware Horizon Community
tdubb123
Expert
Expert

migrating horizon 6 from 5.5 to 6.0

has anyone been able to migrate horizon view 6.2 from vcenter 5.5 to 6.0?

do a brand new installation or migrastion? what do you do with the replica vm? how do you move that to vcenter 6? cannot edit the replica vm to change the dvport group

32 Replies
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Once you have the golden image on the new vCenter you could create a snapshot and recompose the pool on that snapshot which would in turn create a replica on the new vCenter.

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Adding to mittim12's comment, you would add the new vCenter and Composer to your existing Connection Server, and will need to recreate all new pools.

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

thanks

6.0.1 build-2088845

do i need to upgrade before moving to vcenter 6.0?

so process is

1. add new vcenter 6.0 to horizon view connection server

2. move view template and register with vcenter 6.0

anything else?

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Horizon View 6.1 is the first version of View that supports vCenter 6, so if you're at 6.0.1, you'd need to upgrade your View components.  This process covers how to address both linked clone and full clone pools...at a high level.

Upgrade View to 6.1.  Build out your new vCenter and host(s).  Add the new vCenter to the View Connection Servers.  Move your parent over to the new vSphere hosts, create new desktop pools for the linked clones, recompose the linked clones.  Move the hosts with the with the full desktop into the new vCenter, create a new manual desktop pool for the full clones, import the desktops into the manual full clone pool, re-assign the users, and convert the manual pool to automated pool. I'd recommend testing the approach on a small scale to verify your procedure and explore the nuances of your environment, as your mileage may vary.

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

i dont have new hosts in vcenter 6.0

so I need to disconnect the 5.5 hosts and move to vc6

but the problem now that i have is that the

replica vms were created on the dvportgroup and there is no way I can change that and move to vss before moving the host to vc6

any idea what to do here?

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes, move one of the hosts from your 5.5 vCenter to the 6.0 vCenter.  Said host should contain your parent VM's that will be used to recompose the pools.

Replicas are clones of the parent based on the specified snapshot that are created when a linked clone pool is composed, so new replicas will be created when the pools associated with the new vCenter are composed.  Be sure to update the port group assignment of the parent VMs and take a new snapshot prior to composing the pool.

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

thanks. will give that a try.

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glennvelsol
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So I just went through this as a rough draft. I upgraded our current infrastructure from horizon 6.1 to horizon 6.2. We were on vsphere 5.5 update 1. We setup a new vcenter server for 6.0 update 1, and took a spare host out of the cluster and upgraded that one host to esxi 6.0 and created a new cluster for that one host. Than I went into our Horizon console and added the newly created vCenter 6.0 server with ease. Now I can deploy windows 10 like butter! What I did with a few machines is removed them from their current pool and than removed them from inventory in vCenter 5.5 and created a new manual pool on the vCenter 6.0 environment, added the VM to inventory on the new 6.0 vCenter and Host, than I was able to add it to the newly created manual pool.

I can start creating new pools, i've never converted a manual pool to an automated pool so I can research that or just leave the older machines in a manual pool and create a new pool for new machines.

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

You'd want to create the pools as automated initially, change the type to a manual pool to add the persistent desktops to your pool, and then change it back to automated.  Here's a post on how to do that:  Manually Add Desktop to Automated Pool | planetmattblog

glennvelsol
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Nice, I will give this a try, thanks

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glennvelsol
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So I tried this and the machine is stuck in the customizing state...like the document says might happen. So looks like this is not a good thing to do...

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

If the desktop get stuck customizing, there's a registry key that can be modified:  View Desktop is Agent Unreachable Status | planetmattblog

larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Also, if you've got Enhanced Message Security Mode enabled on the Connection Server (which is enabled by default), you may have some issues with an agent prior to 6.1.  Here's some info on that:  VMware KB: How to change a Horizon 6 version 6.1 environment from Enhanced message security mode to ...

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glennvelsol
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We're running Horizon 6.2. Thanks, I will give it another try and try the reg key hack.

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glennvelsol
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I created the registery setting prior to the pool switch because it was missing the key. With the key in there, the process went smooth Smiley Happy

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

i moved my parent vms to a single host. Do I need to move the connection server and the composer to this host together with the parent vms to vcenter 6 as well?

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larsonm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

The Connection and Composer Servers are not required to be in the same vCenter as the desktops, but if your plan is to migrate everything from the old vCenter to the new vCenter, they'll need to be brought over at some point in the process.

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

how about the existing desktops? Users are logged into them. Can migrate all those to one host and disconnect and move them to vcenter 6?

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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

on my connection server I tried adding vcenter 6 but at the end I got an error

Screen Shot 2015-09-25 at 8.52.04 AM.png

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