Migrate hosts to new vCenter without maintenance mode (vCenter 5.0 to 5.5)

[rvirene]

Greetings,

I would like to move some ESXi 5.0 hosts that are in a cluster on vCenter 5.0 to a new 5.5 vCenter without powering down the guests. Is this possible? I've read a lot about requiring maintenance mode, and then saw an old article (KB1002314) that described simply disconnecting them from vCenter and adding them to the new vCenter (This was for version v3.0). Maybe this can still be done? From the article, "VMware recommends removing the VirtualCenter management agent and VMware HA services afterward." - I imagine this would still need to happen.

I also read this, which suggest the same is possible: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/04/17/the-basics-moving-hosts-from-one-vcenter-server-to-the-other...

Any help is appreciated,

Rick

[a_p_]

I migrated hosts in the past with the VM's powered on. What I did - to rule out possible issues - is to disable HA and set DRS to manual while doing this. You can disconnect the host, then remove it from the old vCenter and finally add it to the new vCenter Server.

André

[rvirene]

Thanks, Andre

Any issue with the old vCenter agent conflicting with a newer version? We're going from a 5.0 to a 5.5 vCenter.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

As soon as the hosts are connected to the new vCenter Server, the required bits are updated on the hosts, and you shouldn't have any issues with this. I did this with 4.1 hosts as well as 5.x hosts and didn't have any issues yet. What's important - and supported in your case - is to always check the interoperability between products like vCenter Server and ESX/ESXi hosts to avoid issue (see VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes)

André