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DLINH747
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ESXi 6.7 Tech refresh

Hello,

I'm looking for suggestions about our ESXi hosts tech refresh. We currently had 11 ESXi hosts and now we are planing to replace with new servers. What are the best practice to do this task if we want the same hostname/IP/Cluster? I was thinking take one ESXi host down , migrate all VMs to other hosts and stand up one by one.

Our current version is 6.7 and what if I also want to upgrade to 7.0. does 7.0 still compatible backward to 6.7?

Thank you in advance for all the suggestion,

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IRIX201110141
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  • Rule of thumb: vCenter can manage ESXi on same version  or up to 2 below. So VCSA 7.0 can manage 7.0,6.7,6.5. But check the support matrix
  • ESX 7.0 Hosts can co-exists with older Hosts within a cluster. Otherwise a upgrade without downtime is impossible

So just add one,a few, all new Hosts to your existing cluster and migrate the VMs from old to new and than remove the old Hosts

  • Think about EVC. As long as you dont switch from Intel -> AMD there is not problem. But think about when several CPU version are between old and new Hosts. You can increase EVC after your migration as well and than restart one VM after another or on next Patch day, so that new EVC can take effect. You need newer upgrade to newer vHW as well so reboot is needed.
  • Most of the time customers want to re-use IP,Hostname, Switchports. So remove HostOldA and replace it with HostNewA and than one after another

Regards,
Joerg

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IRIX201110141
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  • Rule of thumb: vCenter can manage ESXi on same version  or up to 2 below. So VCSA 7.0 can manage 7.0,6.7,6.5. But check the support matrix
  • ESX 7.0 Hosts can co-exists with older Hosts within a cluster. Otherwise a upgrade without downtime is impossible

So just add one,a few, all new Hosts to your existing cluster and migrate the VMs from old to new and than remove the old Hosts

  • Think about EVC. As long as you dont switch from Intel -> AMD there is not problem. But think about when several CPU version are between old and new Hosts. You can increase EVC after your migration as well and than restart one VM after another or on next Patch day, so that new EVC can take effect. You need newer upgrade to newer vHW as well so reboot is needed.
  • Most of the time customers want to re-use IP,Hostname, Switchports. So remove HostOldA and replace it with HostNewA and than one after another

Regards,
Joerg

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DLINH747
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Thank you for your suggestion

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