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HI ALL.
I ahve a project coming up to upgrade my current ESX 3.5 environment to vSphere 5. both environments will be up at the same time ( new hardware etc). If possible i cant ahve any down time.
Current Environment:
2 ESX 3,5 Hosts
Fiber Channel Storage, EMC CX4-120
about 25 VM's (including Exchange 2003, DC's and 3 SQL servers)
New Environment
2 ESXi5 hosts
vSphere 5 Enterprise License
iSCSI Storage, EMX VNX
backup with Datadomain and Networker.
As i mentioned before, the new environment will be built along side the old one, so i need to HOT migrate the guests over.
Whats the best way to do this? can i add the old hosts to the iSCSI network and vStorage Motion (is it even possible on 3.5, also should i be concerned about moving Exchange 2003 and SQL like this)
is my only alternative p2v. if i am P2Ving should i do a cold migration of exchange and the SQl servers.
if possible i would like to uitilise VMFS5 and the unified 1 mb block size.
I am also planning on using the vCenter Virtual appliace. whats the down side to using this with 2 hosts for a SMB.
thanks in advance!!!
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While there are many ways of doing this, here is the method I personally prefer as it doesn't require using converter.
- Point your new vCenter 5 instance to the 3.5 licensing. Go to Administration>vCenter Server Settings. Under Licensing>License Server, enter the name of your 3.5 vCenter server. Should look something like 27000@myoldvcenter.mydomain.com
- Configure your old LUNs and vSwitches on the new ESX hosts
- In the old VIC, remove your ESX 3.5 hosts from any clusters then disconnect them from the 3.5 vCenter.
- Add the old ESX hosts to the new VCenter
- VMotion your VMs to the new ESX hosts. At this point your are still left with old 3.5 VMs and VMFS.
- Next steps will require brief downtime depending upon the size of your VMDKs. Do a "hardware upgrade" on the VMs and reboot them
- VMOTION Storage to new LUNs with new VMFS
- Done!
Gotcha's to watch for while migrating:
- New MAC Addresses (if you use converter or other methods)
- When VMotion as described above, you may have to edit each VM to update the network settings especially if you are moving to a distributed switch
- If your ESX 3.5 hosts are unstable and/or you don't remove them from your old clusters prior to disconnecting them, they may crash
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One note to the above steps: Upgrade the VMTools before upgrading the VMHardware.
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Hii,
I would suggest you to upgrade old servers using vCenter Update Manger,
it is very easy to upgrade with a min downtime.
You can follow this process upgrade your vCenter server to 5.x --> followed by update manager (same version for that of vCenter) --> vSphere client -->VMtools &VmHardware upgrade --> and lastly ESXi Hosts
Be sure to backup the vCenter & Update Manager Database. And in case you're running 32-bit windows, you will need to upgrade to 64-bit OS for installing vCenter 5. I suggest you to go through the below whitepaper atleast once prior starting the upgrade
For upgrading using VUM, check out this link.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/upgrade.html
and this article might help you.
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1785-vSphere-5-video-Migrating-from-ESX-4.1-to-ESXi-5.0.html.
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Thanks for your help guys!!!.
Are there any instruction avaliable for adding the old VIC to the licensing section on the new vCenter. Any gotcha's?
Thanks again!
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No it just allows you to add those servers to VCenter. They just have to be removed from the old one.