VCenter Upgrade 5.1 .0 - Consolidation

[Za_El]

Hi,

I am wondering if someone can guide me in the right direction:

Currently this is my enviroment:  I have 2 different offices/Sites connected via the WAN.  There is also small remote site with one ESXi host (5 vm's)  not being managed by a Vcenter server.

Site 1

1 x Vcenter Server 5.0

4 x ESXi Hosts 5.0

40-45  Vm's

Site 2

1 x Vcenter Server 5.0

4 x ESXi Hosts 5.0

40-45 Vm's

I want to consolidate ( and at the same time upgrade to 5.1)  the Vcenter so that I have one Vcenter instance manageing both Sites.  Once the Vcenter is up and running I will then upgrade the Esxi Hosts with Update Manager.

My questions are:

• Would it be best to create a new 5.1 Vcenter Server as supposed to upgrading?
• What would I lose if i dont do an upgrade?  Resource Pools?  Switch Networks? Etc?
• Can the 2nd Vcenter in site 2 then serve as a backup/failover
• How Practical is it to have one Vcenter across Wan's  ?  
• What is the differences between Datacentres  and Clusters?  Do i create one Datacentre and multiple Clusters?  or do I create Datacentre  for each site and then the Cluster under each site?
• How will consoldating  all of this affect my licensing?
• Can I do Storagemotion and Vmotion between the Sites if they are in one Vcenter?

Any help would be appreciated.

El.

[a_nut_in · Accepted solution]

Hi El,

Answers below

Site 1

1 x Vcenter Server 5.0

4 x ESXi Hosts 5.0

40-45  Vm's

Site 2

1 x Vcenter Server 5.0

4 x ESXi Hosts 5.0

40-45 Vm's

I want to consolidate ( and at the same time upgrade to 5.1)  the Vcenter so that I have one Vcenter instance manageing both Sites.  Once the Vcenter is up and running I will then upgrade the Esxi Hosts with Update Manager.

My questions are:

• Would it be best to create a new 5.1 Vcenter Server as supposed to upgrading?
• What would I lose if i dont do an upgrade?  Resource Pools?  Switch Networks? Etc?
• Can the 2nd Vcenter in site 2 then serve as a backup/failover
• How Practical is it to have one Vcenter across Wan's  ?  
• What is the differences between Datacentres  and Clusters?  Do i create one Datacentre and multiple Clusters?  or do I create Datacentre  for each site and then the Cluster under each site?
• How will consoldating  all of this affect my licensing?
• Can I do Storagemotion and Vmotion between the Sites if they are in one Vcenter?

1. Both upgrade or fresh should work fine - depends on whether you want a fresh VC or an upgrade :smileysilly:
2. All VC configurations would be lost - resource pools/vDS settings/user rights/ that are manually configured on VC etc
3. No. You would need to implement Virtual Center Heartbeat or something to get that to work
4. As long as the network latency is not that great and all required ports for VC/ESX operations are open, should work
5. Again, does not matter. You can either have One datacenter, one cluster and all hosts or One Datacenter, two clusters or two datacenters and two clusters - this is more a design that you want implemented :smileygrin:
6. Licensing for VC will change because you will have one VC as opposed to two - but ESX licensing will not change as it is based on sockets
7. As long as there is no network latency and you have a good throughput across the WAN, this should work

Regards

a

[Za_El]

Thank you !