Online change ESXi to new vCenter

[ccbird]

Hi,

ESXi1 and ESXi2 with MSCS VM and RDM in exist vCenter 5.5.

Create new vCenter 6.5

Could online add ESX1 and ESX2 with MSCS VM change to new vCenter 6.5?

Best regards,

Chung

[rajen450m]

Hi,

I prefer to do the upgrade from 5.5 to 6.5 without any discrepancies.

if you have dependency for 5.5 vcenter, then i doubt on your approach of doing online. you should take them down and should bring to new vcenter.

Moreover, if you change ESXi hosts without keeping them on maintenance mode, to my knowledge you may face or get connectivity errors on VM console later.

Regards,

[dbalcaraz · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes, you can do it.

When you add RDMs, datastores and so on. You are doing it in the ESXi side, so it doesn't matter if you remove your hosts from the vCenter, remember that the core of the virtualization is the Hypervisor running on the ESXi hosts.

So yes, you can create a new vCenter and then you will have to remove and add the new hosts to the new vCenter.
Of course you will have to migrate the networking and more information like Resource Pools if you have for example.

Here you can find more information: VMware Knowledge Base