Prerequisites of SRM

[Hamid314]

At our Datacenter we are currently running ESXi 6 which we have used SRM 8.1 but we want to upgrade ESXi to 6.7

1-Please tell me is this necessary for SRM to have same ESXi on two sides (Protected Site ,Recover Site) ?

2-What should be the same version (without ESXi) on both sides ?

Please tell me your references ..

thanks

[Rajhere]

Hi Hamid,

Yes, you must have same ESXi host version on both Primary and Seconday site.

if you planning to upgrade please kindly check the upgrade path here -  VMware Product Interoperability Matrices 

[T180985 · Accepted solution]

As above, there is a specific order to follow when upgrading any SRM protected environment. See Order of Upgrading vSphere and Site Recovery Manager Components

e.g.

Upgrading Site Recovery Manager by Sites

Upgrade the protected site first, so you can perform a disaster recovery on the recovery site if you encounter problems during the upgrade that render the protected site unusable.

1. If you use vSphere Replication, upgrade any additional vSphere Replication servers on the protected site.
2. Upgrade the vSphere Replication appliance on the protected site.
3. Upgrade Site Recovery Manager Server on the protected site.
4. If you use array-based replication, upgrade the storage replication adapters (SRA) on the protected site.
5. (Optional) Upgrade the Platform Services Controller and all components of vCenter Server on the protected site.
6. (Optional) Upgrade the ESXi host on the protected site.
7. If you use vSphere Replication, upgrade any additional vSphere Replication servers on the recovery site.
8. Upgrade the vSphere Replication appliance on the recovery site.
9. Upgrade Site Recovery Manager Server on the recovery site.
10. If you use array-based replication, upgrade the storage replication adapters (SRA) on the recovery site.
11. (Optional) Upgrade the Platform Services Controller and all components of vCenter Server on the recovery site.
12. (Optional) Upgrade the ESXi hosts on the recovery site.
13. Verify the connection between the Site Recovery Manager sites.
14. Verify that your protection groups and recovery plans are still valid.
15. (Optional) Upgrade the virtual hardware and VMware Tools on the virtual machines on the ESXi hosts.

[Hamid314]

Thank you for your answer , T180985

But in this context,does optional mean that if we upgrade esxi to one site, there is no need to upgrade to the second? Even with a different hardware version?

[Hamid314]

Thank you for your response , Rajhere

But I mean if we upgrade esxi on one side do we need to upgrade on the other? (Regardless of srm and vsphere replication server or appliance )

Your link shows the conditions for upgrading srm from one version to another

[mc1903cae]

Hi Rajhere​

Ref: " you must have same ESXi host version on both Primary and Seconday site. " - Is there a VMware docs reference for this as a SRM requirement?

I appreciate why there needs to be VM compatibility between both sites, but this can be achieved by setting the Default Compatibility for Virtual Machine Creation to the same setting at either the Datacenter, Cluster or even Host level, for both sites?

Having hosts in different clusters on different ESXi versions is acceptable outside of SRM (sometimes you have no option but to have a later ESXi version on newer hardware), so surely as long as there is VM hardware compatibility, for those VMs you plan to protect with SRM, between the clusters; does a difference in ESXi versions in each cluster matter?

Cheers

M

[T180985]

From what ive seen the pre-requisite is that the vCenter version has to match between sites but you can run different levels of ESXi. Just bare in mind you may run into hardware version issues if they missmatch significantly