What are the steps to upgrade from vCenter/vSphere 5.0 Essentials Plus to vCenter/vSphere 5.5 Standard?

[maltamirano9160]

We currently have VMWare Essentials Plus on 3 hosts, with 2CPU's each. We wanted to add 2 more ESX hosts, so we upgraded our license to Standard for vCenter/vSphere to version 5.5. We're trying to figure out the best possible route to install 5.5 on the hosts and upgrade the vCenter Server with our new licensing and software version. Would the best initial step be to apply the new license under our current 5.0 hosts and vCenter server and then upgrade the software 1 by 1? Or Apply the new license to our current vCenter Server, pgrade server to 5.5 and then upgrade each host? Our Dell rep gave me this guide (Upgrade to VMware vSphere, Cloud Computing for Businesses of all Sizes | United States) and mentioned if we need any support further, to contact VMWare.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

[admin · Accepted solution]

5.0 and 5.5 should use the same keys. So start by adding the new license key to your vCenter server so you are able to manage more than 3 hosts.

Next step would be to update the vCenter server to 5.5 so it can actually manage 5.5 hosts.

Afterwards you would update the hosts.

Host licenses can also be replaced at any time during this process, as they are also version 5.x specific.

Theoretical you could even stay on 5.0 and just replace the licenses if they are not some kind of special license keys.

[maltamirano9160]

Thanks, Frank!