I am currently running vCenter Server 4.1 U2 on a Windows XP 64-Bit VM, which manages two hosts running ESXi Essentials Plus 4.1 (build 260247). The two hosts are in a cluster configured for HA. We are using a SQL Server 2005 Express database.
I am planning our upgrade to vCenter Server 5.0 U1 and ESXi 5.0 U1a on our hosts. vCenter 5.0 will run on a Windows Server 2008 64-Bit VM, with a SQL Server 2008 Express database. I have already built that VM, and I have installed vCenter Server 5.0 U1a, Update Manager 5.0 U1a, and the vSphere Client.
I am having trouble determing the best method for accomplishing the migration to the new vCenter Server 5.0. Since we are only using Essentials Plus, our configuration is fairly simple. However, I am hoping to retain our cluster configuration, if possible. Is the vCenter Data Migration Tool the answer here? Or is there another recommended method?
Thank you for any help!
Welcome to the COmmunity - Have you looked at the upgrade guide - http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-501-upgrad... - gives step by step process for switching platforms while upgarding to vCenter 5 -
I have looked at the upgrade guide several times, but it's a bit unclear to me. I guess I will go back again and try to make complete sense of it.
It sounds like I should indeed be using the data migration tool, which apparently will automatically install vCenter Server 5.0. Since I already manually installed it on the new server, do I need to uninstall it before proceeding with the data migration tool?
Ok, I just found this KB article:
It does state that I need to uninstall the vCenter Server 5.0 instance I already installed on the new VM. It also says it will handle the back up of my existing database, configuration data, etc. However, this line is glaring:
"vCenter Server 4.1.x is not supported for the data migration tool"
Is that correct??? If so, now I'm really confused... Another thing that gets me is this:
"VMware recommends that you retain the existing hostname and IP address on the target vCenter Server when possible"
I can do that, but at what point should I change the IP/hostname of the original vCenter Server so that I can reassign them to the new one?
Thanks.
Any additional information on this would be great as I am in the same position with my upgrade. The documentation is not clear on exactly what the correct process is.
I'm also trying this and finding the documentation from vmware to be very confusing to say the least. What i've found is this:
1. v5.1 of vcenter isn't supported on Win XP, it took me a while to find this out although there were many mentions of not being able to do an in place upgrade on xp to v5.1.
2. You can't do a migration of vCenter between 2 differrent OSs.
What i can tell from this is there is no supported route from a Windows XP vCenter server v4.x to Windows 2008 v5.x. Here's what i did to get around this:
1. Created a new Windows 2008 server instance.
2. Installed vCenter v4.x onto Windows 2008 machine.
3. Stopped the vcenter server service on both machines.
4. Backed up the VIM_VCDB database on the XP machine.
5. Removed the VIM_VCDB database on the 2008 machine.
6. Restored from the backup on the 2008 machine.
7. Shutdown the XP machine.
8. Give the new 2008 machine the same ip as the XP machine had.
9. Start the vcenter service.
10. Connect through the vSphere client and then connect to your hosts (there should be a way to copy over the SSL certificates but i couldn't find the destination on win 2008.
11. You should then be able to do an in place upgrade to v5.x.
This worked for me but we only have 2 hosts and no resource pools, vapps so a simple configuration, i hope this helps.
