Is it supported to run DRS 7 enabled vSphere 7 Cluster with ESXi 6.7 hosts?

[ferdis]

Hi all,  is it supported to run DRS 7 enabled vSphere 7 Cluster with ESXi 6.7 hosts? If so what are potential constraints resp. limitations of such a setup?

[scott28tt]

I can't think why that would be an issue - vCenter Server is the "decision maker" of DRS and initiates host actions such as VM power on and migrations.

[ferdis]

New DRS vLCM Photon VMs for distributed DRS then run also on top of ESXi 6.7 hosts. Correct?

[scott28tt]

No idea.

[ashilkrishnan]

Hi @ferdis ,

If you are referring to vCLS (vSphere Cluster Services) VMs introduced in 7.0 U1, they will work with 6.7 hosts. If you have 6.5 hosts ensure that the hardware version for these VMs are kept at version 11.

Hope that helps

[ferdis]

I have information that even its possible and supported to run vCenter 7 U1 DRS Enabled Cluster (using vCLS vSphere Cluster Services) with ESXi 6.7 its not recommended. Anyone could elaborate on this and explain reasons?

[ashilkrishnan]

There is a note here about 6.5 ESXi hosts --> vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) in vSphere 7.0 Update 1  

• Do not update the hardware version of vCLS VMs. They are kept at HW version 11 so these are backwards compatible with vSphere 6.5.

If you go by that, 6.7 hosts should also be supported for this feature

[depping]

Yes it is possible and supported. Just look at the compatibility guide of vCenter and ESXi.

[depping]

Also, I have a bunch of Q&A listed here:

http://vmwa.re/vclsqa