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Rmalmberg
Contributor
Contributor

3.5 to 5.1 Upgrade Issues

I am working on upgrading (7) ESX 3.5 hosts to 5.1 by vMotion-ing all of the VMs off of one host, removing it from the cluster and doing a clean install of ESXi 5.1.  I am also installing a new vCenter Server 5.1 (using a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM).

I know that the vCenter Server 5.1 cannot manage ESX 3.x hosts, but can the vCenter Server 3.5 manage the 5.1 host?  There is barely enough hardware resources to handle the VM workload with a single host offline, so I need to migrate some VMs to the new 5.1 host before updating another 3.5 host.

(When I attempt to add the new ESXi 5.1 host to the old vCenter Server, I receive a The SSL Certificate of the remote host could not be validated error; there is no CA set up on the domain, and I have gone through the regeneration of SSL keys following hostname changes.  Edit, forgot to mention that Check host certificates is disabled on the old vCenter Server.

Any thoughts on how to begin migrating VMs from the 3.5 hosts to the 5.1 host to continue the upgrade plan?  (Definitely would prefer zero downtime.)

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sparrowangelste
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Rmalmberg wrote:


I know that the vCenter Server 5.1 cannot manage ESX 3.x hosts, but can the vCenter Server 3.5 manage the 5.1 host?  T

No

 

Any thoughts on how to begin migrating VMs from the 3.5 hosts to the 5.1 host to continue the upgrade plan?  (Definitely would prefer zero downtime.)

with downtime:

convert to ova and import them on the new system

copy the vm files over.

if using shared storage, give access to the 5.1 host and start it up on the new host  after turning off and removing from inventory of old one.

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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Rmalmberg
Contributor
Contributor

That's what I was afraid of.

New plan:

Re-install the first host with vSphere 5.0 and a vCenter Server 5.0 VM, bring the 3.5 hosts into the 5.0 vCenter, vMotion the VMs off of one of the 3.5 hosts and bring it down to re-install with vSphere 5.0.  After all hosts are at 5.0, update vSphere and vCenter using vCenter Update Manager.

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