Move VM's from ESX 2.5 to ESX 3.5

[tsteinhoff]

I've been running a group of hosts with ESX 2.5.2 for some time now. I know, it's very out of date at this point. I've recently purchased some new hardware and got some new ESX 3.5 licenses to go along with the hardware. I'd like to move a bunch of my old 2.5.2 VM's to the new hardware running 3.5 update 2. Can anyone suggest the easiest way to go about this?

[chill]

There are two ways of doing this.

1. You can use Storage VMotion to move the vm's from one ESX server to the other. This is a live migration.

2. You can use VMWare Converter to move them. This is a cold migration.

[AWo]

Which ressources do you have? Do you have a SAN where all ESX servers are/can be connected to? Do you have to do an inplace upgrade?

The easiest migration can be done if you hava a SAN and you can connect the new ESX server to it to see the VMFS2 volumes. Then you can use upgrade VMotion, which allows you to migrate powered‐on virtual machines from an ESX Server 2.x host to an ESX Server 3.x host while simultaneously relocating the virtual machine files from a VMFS2 to a VMFS3 datastore. This allows you to completely avoid virtual machine downtime associated with the host and datastore upgrade.

Read this document for more information and additional hints: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_upgrade_guide.pdf

Message was edited by: AWo

[tsteinhoff]

Yes, I have two SANs. I'm looking to separate my environment from my customer environment. I do have one ESX 3.5 server on the old environment right now that's connected to the same SAN. I believe that we do not have enterprise licensing for vmotion. I only have standard licenses due to budget constraints.

The VMConverter seems like it might be the option that I'm looking to use. I can deal with a bit of downtime as long as it's only one server at a time for a limited amount of time. It looks like I have a license for the software that came along with the purchase of my new licenses. Anything that I should know about this scenario that might be tricky?

[chill · Accepted solution]

VMWare Converter is a great tool. It's very user friendly. The only

gotcha that I have found is that I remove any kind of server management

tool, i.e., ibm director from the windows vm's prior to using VMWare

Converter. The management tool sometimes breaks the windows os during

the conversion.

Here's the admin guide:

- http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vec_10_admin_guide.pdf

[AWo]

If you do not have VMotion you can migrate them offline to the new server (and the new VMFS3 volume) with VC. Add the ESX 2.5 server to your VI3 infrastructure (you need free processor licenses to do so) and choose "Migrate", select the ESX 3.5 server as the destination. After moving the guest do a hardware upgrade there, install the new VMware Tools and you're done. Be aware that this copies the machine over the wire, so it may take some time.