Upgrading vSphere 4.0 to 6.7

[AK0804]

Hello all,

In our organization have 2 ESX host v.4 with vCenter management v.4 too, I bought license for vCenter 6.7 and ESXi 6.7.

I want to ask:

Do I can upgrade directly to 6.7 or need to go through a version 5.5 and then to make the upgrade?

Thanks for help.

[asajm]

Hi AK0804​

You cannot upgrade ESXi Host from 4.x to 6.x, you need to first upgrade 4.x to 5.x and then upgrade to 6.x.

Before upgrading to 5 or 6, make sure you ESXi Host is compatible with ESXi 6.

VMware Compatibility Guide - System Search

[daphnissov]

If you have hosts that old, the absolute first thing you need to check and ensure is that the hardware even supports 6.7. You can find that out for yourself here. Once you've established that, I would highly recommend just installing ESXi 6.7 fresh and ​not​ performing an upgrade.

[AK0804]

Thanks for helping.

for installing fresh 6.7, do I need to migrate the Vm's to other ESX host and remove him from the cluster, right?

[daphnissov]

Yes, you should plan on backing those VMs up and also moving them off to external storage.

[AK0804]

They are already running on Ext. storage.

Thank you!!

[daphnissov]

Be that as it may, I would still strongly recommend you take full backups of each VM before you rebuild those hosts. Having a little extra insurance never hurts.