Upgrade from vSphere 5.1/vCenter 5.1 to vSphere 6.0/vCenter 6.0

[PhilAtEI]

I have not done a migration in some time.

I have 8 hosts running vSphere 5.1 and a vCenter 5.1.0 (1064983) vm.

I have a few different storage units that are used on this cluster.

All datastores are formatted as vmfs5.

Host 1 was removed from the cluster and vSphere 6.0.0 (3620759) loaded on it.

The two fiber cables were removed to ensure there were no issues with the shared storage.

A 6.0 vCSA was loaded on the local datastore of host 1, which I will move as soon as I have shared storage connected.

My question is, will I suffer any issues if I plug the fiber in and have the 6.0 vCenter see all of the storage my vCenter 5.1 sees?

I would like to migrate all of the vm's from host 2 to host 1 and then build host 2 and add it to the 6.0 cluster and continue like this until all 8 hosts are in the vCenter 6.0 datacenter.

The way I've done this in the past was with one shared LUN to use as a migration LUN between the two vCenters, but that was because it was a newer vmfs.

Will what I stated above, work without issue?

Thanks in advance!

[virtualg_uk · Accepted solution]

I don't see any issue.

Have you considered connecting all 5.1 hosts to the 6.0VCSA then upgrading the hosts afterwards? This way you will be able to vMotion VMs off hosts and upgrade them one at a time

[PhilAtEI]

Thanks grba, I will do that!

[virtualg_uk]

No problem, it'll save you some time