Upgrading from Esxi 5.1 to 6 question

[ashleymilne]

I have two hosts currently on Esxi 5.1 that I want to upgrade to 6.0, all the vm's have VMNEXT2 adapters. I can't seem to find out whether or not these adapters are supported under Esxi 6 or not, I suspect I will have to replace them all with VMXNET3 adapters. If so, what would the steps be?

1.Upgrade host to Esxi 6

2.Upgrade vmware tools in all vm's to latest version

3.Remove VMXNET2 adapter from each vm and replace with VMXNET3

How tricky is removing the existing VMXNET2 adapter and replacing it with VMXNET3? The guests are running versions of Windows server from 2008(32bit), 2008R2, 2012 and 2012R2.

Thanks.

[daphnissov]

I'd recommend swapping those VMXNET2 adapters for VMXNET3 prior to running the upgrade. Record the guest IP settings on each VM you need to change, remove the old vNIC, and add the new one of the correct type and replace the entries. This will obviously cause network interruption, and you should plan to do this during a reboot cycle as well for the best result. Also ensure VMtools are current on VMs on which you perform this process *prior* to beginning.

[ashleymilne]

Is the VMXNET3 adapter an option in Esx 5.1 as I thought it wasn't available until 5.5?

So while still on 5.1, remove existing VMXNET2 and replace with VMXNET3 then do the upgrade to Esxi 6?

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

Yes, VMXNET3 is an option on ESXi 5.1. Your VMs need to be at hardware level 7 or greater.

So while still on 5.1, remove existing VMXNET2 and replace with VMXNET3 then do the upgrade to Esxi 6?

This is what I would recommend, yes.