ESX Host hardware upgrade question

[RaglanDan]

I have three esx hosts all running ESX 3.5 update 2. I am replacing one of them with new hardware and migrating all of them to a new SAN. The new hardware is a HP Blade running ESXi 3.5 Update 3 embedded and is attached to the new SAN only.

My question relates to licensing. I only have licenses for 3 Dual CPU servers (ESX1, 2 and 3) so what is the best way to migrate the VMs to the new Host? Can I remove ESX2 from VC and then add ESX4 (the new blade) and then migrate all the machines from ESX1 (the decomissioned server) to ESX4 and then remove ESX1 from VC and re-add ESX2 so that I am left with ESX2, 3 and 4 in VC?

Also should I attach ESX1 to the new SAN before I do this so that when I do the cold migration (I only have Standard license so no storage vMotion) it will be faster?

Any help much appreciated.

[mcowger]

Put the 3 new ones in trial mode, then you can have them all up. move all your VMs, then bring down the old ones, then take the new ones out of trial mode and point htem at your lic. server.

--Matt

[Craig_Baltzer · Accepted solution]

The only downside of "borrowing" a license from ESX2 by removing it from VC and then adding it back later will be if you're using folders in VC; the VMs from ESX2 will get added back into the VC inventory when you re-add the host but if you've been seperating them out into folders then that structure will be lost. Not a huge deal to drag and drop the VMs into the right place once they're re-added if you made note of where everything goes before deleting ESX2.

Another approach is to attach ESX1-3 to the SAN, move all of the VMs to the SAN, then delete ESX1 from VC, flip it to unlicensed, and remove from the SAN. Then connect up ESX4, connect it to the license server and add it to VC, then re-add the VMs to inventory. That would avoid mucking with ESX2 and would be my preferred approach (least amount of changes needed and only ESX1 is affected)...

[Craig_Baltzer]

Hi Matt. When I've tried this in the past (and I just re-tried it again to verify) you'll not be able to add the "evaluation mode" host to a licensed VC host (you'll get a "Not enough licenses installed" error). I believe its complaining about VC client licenses (as opposed to ESX CPU licenses) as when you look at the ESX host in eval mode there are no VC client licenses associated with it. If the VC server itself is in eval mode as well then this does work...