Migrating from 5.0 to 5.5

[robm82]

Hello everyone,

I have what is probably a very stupid question, but I don't have a lot of experience with VMware so please excuse me...  I have recently inherited a vSphere 5.0 estate that consists of two Dell R710s connected to a Dell EqualLogic SAN via iSCSI.  I have been asked to replace the R710's as they are old and need replacing.  What I would like to do is to buy some new Dell R720 Servers to replace them with, whilst at the same time upgrade the environment to the latest release (5.5) but I am unsure of the best upgrade path to take or how I can migrate the VMs across to the new 5.5 Servers?  So in the end I want the old R710 / 5.0 Servers with a new set of R720 / 5.5 Servers still using the same EqualLogic storage.  Any help or advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated .

[vlearn]

If the VMs are stored in LUN, un register the VMs from R710 server.

Do a Fresh install of ESX 5.5u1 on R720 Server, attache the LUNs to this server and re-register the VMs from LUNs.

If the VMs are on local datastore, use vCenter Server to migrate the VMs from R710 server to R720 Server.

[robm82]

The VMs are indeed stored within the LUNs.  So as a basic list of tasks, would I:

1. Shutdown all the VM's, and put the hosts into maintenance mode?
2. Remove/unregister all the VMs that are on the old 5.0 environment?
3. Unmount the LUNs on the old 5.0 environment?
4. Mount the LUNs on the new 5.5 environment?
5. Register the VMs within the 5.5 environment?
6. Startup the VMs, and upgrade VMware tools?

Does this sound like a good basic task list?  I can obviously sort out the technical aspects myself, but I just need someone to verify that this is a sound process to follow.

[a_p_]

Just some quick questions:

• do you run the ESXi hosts in a cluster, managed by vCenter Server?
• if yes which vSphere Edition do you use (i.e. do you have vMotion licensed)?
• does the storage system with its current firmware support vSphere 5.5?

André

[Tladi]

Hi,

Do an inplace upgrade of vCenter

Add the new servers to the Current setup

vMotion all the VM's to the new servers, if you do not have the Licensing then shutdown the vm's and move them over

Upgrade the 710 to 5.5

Regards

[robm82]

Hi a.p.

• Yes we do run the ESXi hosts in a cluster managed by vCenter Server
• We are running Enterprise Plus, and I believe this gives us a license for vMotion
• The storage system is currently on old firmware (version 5.1), and I need to upgrade it to version 7 so this is a task I will be doing before we do any VMware upgrades

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Here is what I can think:

-  Upgrade your 5.0 vCenter to 5.5. Or fresh install of vCenter if you do not care performance history/data etc.

-  If you upgrade VC from 5.0 to 5.5, you host cluster will be as it is with your old servers (5.0). In case of fresh Vc install, you will have to create host cluster & other configuration again.

-  For the sake of steps, I assume, you have done VC upgrade (5.0 -5.5 latest). Hence your host cluster is already there.

- Install ESXi 5.5 latest on new servers & mount the LUNs to these servers/hosts.

- Add these new servers to host cluster. Now your host cluster will have old hosts and new hosts.

- At this moment, all your LUNs are shared across old and new hosts/servers.

-Make sure vMotion network is configured properly across all hosts (new as well old): You have enterprise server, hence you can leverage vMotion.

-If all CPUs are compatible with vMotion in old & new hosts, then vMotion will be smooth. If CPUs are from same family but feature sets are different, you will have to configure EVC to do successful vMotion.

-Start migrating your old hosts VMs to New hosts (I mean, vMotion ie. without powering them down)

-Once the all VMs are migrated to new hosts, put your old hosts into maintenance mode & take all old host out of cluster.

- Remove from maintenance mode (old hosts) and remove these hosts from vCenter. Finally unmount LUNs from old hosts.

If you have installed fresh vCenter server, then you need to create new host cluster & add all (new + old ) hosts to new cluster. Rest of the steps are same.

Refer: EVC : VMware KB: Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support

Note: I am assuming you have not enabled any cluster features on host cluster such as DRS/DPM/HA etc. If yes, you can disable during migration.

Let me know if you need any help/clarification

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

With the licenses and the SAN (shared) storage you have, the migration shouldn't require much downtime. After upgrading the storage system, you can either upgrade vCenter Server or install a new one, depending on your environment (e.g. supported SQL version, vSphere features like vDS, permissions, etc.). Once the new vCenter Server is in place you can then install the new ESXi hosts and add them to vCenter (in evaluation mode, since the CPU licenses are still bound to the old hosts). Depending on whether the new hosts can be added to the same cluster (compatible EVC mode) you can even vMotion the VMs to the new hosts without downtime, otherwise you will have to create a new cluster for the new hosts and migrate the VMs while powered off. Once the "old" hosts are empty, remove them from vCenter - which will free the CPU licenses - and assign the licenses to the new hosts. As a last step you may consider to upgrade VMware Tools as well as the HW version (virtual compatibility mode) on the VMs, which will most likely require a reboot.

Caution: Do not upgrade the virtual HW version (virtual compatibility mode) for vCenter Server to HW version 10 (5.5 compatibility). If you do this, you will not be able to manage vCenter Server using the Windows based vSphere Client anymore!

André