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DuquesneClub
Contributor
Contributor

Upgrading VMFS5 to VMFS6...In place???

I've been trying to find info on upgrading VMFS5 to VMFS6 on the interwebs...

Everything I'm seeing states that it CANNOT be done in place. You have to migrate your data, then recreate the datastore and migrate your data back once complete.

There is a local consultant stating it can be done in place via CLI and he's done it.

Has anyone else upgraded their VMFS in this fashion? And were there any hiccups?

Thanks in advance,

Max

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ashwin_prakash
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

We would not recommend to upgrade the VMFS volume version when there is data on the datastore. Also its a prerequisite to move and empty the datastore before the upgrade.

Things to consider before running this cmdlet:

- After migrating all active or registered VMs from the source datastore, if swap files or delta.vmdk (snapshots of vitual disk) files are found, the datastore will not be upgraded.

This cmdlet performs the following tasks:

1. Backs up the VMFS5 (source) datastore, if the datastore contains any VMs or any other directories or files, to another VMFS5 datastore (temporary).

Online Documentation - Cmdlet Reference - VMware {code}

Below mentioned is the KB for your reference.

VMware Knowledge Base

Sincerely,
Ashwin Prakash
Skyline Support Moderator
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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

There is no supported way to do this in place, so yes you must migrate VMs to a new datastore.

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