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Dwayne_CT
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Do you migrate or build new VCSA 6.7 if most of the current vCenter 6.0 features are not being used

Hello everyone,

Happy holiday, What are your thoughts and best practice for my question above. Current environment uses Essential Plus running on vsphere 6.0.

Current environment:

1. 5  esxi  6.0 hosts

2. 1 windows vCenter

3. Features of vCenter not being used

4. No Backup APIs to worry about nor storage APis

Would you build a new VCSA 6.7, then add each ESXi to the vcenter then upgrade each host? I am aware of the best practices and correct order etc of doing the upgrade. But if your current vCenter is not being used why migrate and not build a new VCSA appliance.

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jonastro
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Hello Dwayne,


Welcome to VMware communities.

From the description I can understand that you have 6.0 hosts managed by 6.0 windows vCenter server.

Since you are not using any vCenter related features and no backup software integration, you can go ahead and deploy a new vCenter appliance 6.7 and rebuild it however there are few points to be considered which I have explained below:

When you deploy new vCenter appliance 6.7 and add the 6.0 hosts to it :

  • You will loose all the VM and host related performance stats, tasks and events data
  • This will work only if the ESXi hosts are not on distributed switch
  • If you have all port groups on distributed switch, you have to migrate them to standard before disconnecting/removing from the source vCenter server

So if you have made up your mind to go for new vCenter appliance here are the steps:

Deploy new vCenter 6.7 appliance

Once deployed you can power off the source vCenter 6.0 machine

Start creating Datacenter and Clusters as per your requirement in the 6.7 appliance

Now you can add the ESXi 6.0 hosts to the cluster

It would give a warning stating that hosts are already managed by another vCenter and do you want to move it here

Select YES and then start adding all the hosts

Now you can upgrade the 6.0 hosts to 6.5 or 6.7 based on which version the hardware supports

You can upgrade hosts using 6.7 Update Manager

Let us know if this answered to your question.

Regards,

Jonathan

Please mark the response as correct if my answer has helped you solve the issue

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scott28tt
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Moderator: Moved to vSphere Upgrade & Install


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Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
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daphnissov
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I'm not sure I would worry about 6.7, but what I'd absolutely do is the following:

  1. Migrate that Windows-based vCenter to the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) to 6.5. Alternatively, build a net-new vCSA on 6.5 and swing hosts.
  2. Upgrade ESXi hosts to 6.5

At the very least, this'll protect you from vSphere 6.0 going EoGS early next year.

jonastro
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
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Hello Dwayne,


Welcome to VMware communities.

From the description I can understand that you have 6.0 hosts managed by 6.0 windows vCenter server.

Since you are not using any vCenter related features and no backup software integration, you can go ahead and deploy a new vCenter appliance 6.7 and rebuild it however there are few points to be considered which I have explained below:

When you deploy new vCenter appliance 6.7 and add the 6.0 hosts to it :

  • You will loose all the VM and host related performance stats, tasks and events data
  • This will work only if the ESXi hosts are not on distributed switch
  • If you have all port groups on distributed switch, you have to migrate them to standard before disconnecting/removing from the source vCenter server

So if you have made up your mind to go for new vCenter appliance here are the steps:

Deploy new vCenter 6.7 appliance

Once deployed you can power off the source vCenter 6.0 machine

Start creating Datacenter and Clusters as per your requirement in the 6.7 appliance

Now you can add the ESXi 6.0 hosts to the cluster

It would give a warning stating that hosts are already managed by another vCenter and do you want to move it here

Select YES and then start adding all the hosts

Now you can upgrade the 6.0 hosts to 6.5 or 6.7 based on which version the hardware supports

You can upgrade hosts using 6.7 Update Manager

Let us know if this answered to your question.

Regards,

Jonathan

Please mark the response as correct if my answer has helped you solve the issue

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Did you find this helpful? Let us know by completing this survey (takes 1 minute!)"

VMware Cloud Foundation
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Dwayne_CT
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Thank you all for your recommendations and feedback. I will potentially go with the route of building a new VCSA then upgrade the hosts.

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