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Langan
Contributor
Contributor

Host Memory Upgrade

We have 4 hosts in our environment, with 55 VMs running total. Each host has 128 GB of RAM. I want to install more RAM in each host, but due to the amount of resources we are using, migrating VM's to another host while we shut it down to install the RAM is out of the question. What is the best way to accomplish this? Can I shut down all the VM's and then all the hosts at once? Or should i power the VM's down 1 host at a time, install the RAM, power back on, and move on to the next? Running Vcenter Version 6.0.0 Build 3617395.

4 Replies
Finikiez
Champion
Champion

The answer is - It depends on maximum available downtime for your VMs. If you can power of everything at the same time - you can do so. If you can shutdown hosts partially that's also fine.

Langan
Contributor
Contributor

I have heard there can be issues if you are using Active Directory and the DC's are VM's; also if your DNS servers are VM's which they are in this case. Should we move VCenter to a powered on host? Or can we safely shut down the whole cluster at once?

Finikiez
Champion
Champion

Of course if you have all your infrastructure inside VMs you must power off everything in special order and power on everything accordingly. Power on ESXi hosts, power on AD\DNS\DHCP then vcenter and other VMs and etc.

I would prefer shutdown hosts one by one and vmotion critical VMs to other hosts if this is possible. This will avoid any potential problem with booting all hosts at once if new memory is broken for example.

Langan
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, that is what I thought.

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