Migrate VM's from VI3.5 to vSphere4

[thx1138]

We have 2 seperate VMWare environments both with their own VCenter (A=VI 3.5, B= VSphere4) The ESX 3.5 hosts in A have local storage only. The hosts in B have SAN storage only. I want to move the VM's from the local storage to the SAN. I don't want to upgrade the 3.5 host to 4. It needs to stay seperated.

I was thinking of connecting the ESX 3.5 hosts to the SAN, so I can move the VM files to a LUN on the SAN. I then would connect this LUN to the vSphere 4 hosts, and import the VM's into vCenter4. But is the VMFS3 filesystem compatible with vSpshere4 ? In other words, will it recognize the volume ?

Also, can I keep both the ESX 3.5 and the Vspshere4 hosts connected to the LUN at the same time ? Not using Vmotion or HA off-course, just to make the migration easier.

The only other option I see it so export the VM's from the ESX 3.5 hosts using FastSCP, and the re-importing them on vSphere4.

[krowczynski]

You can make the SAN visible to the ESX 3.5 and make a cold migration of the vms.

When the vms are on SAN, you power them on the ESX 4, update the tools and the hardware.

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Why don't you use the free VMware Converter to move the VMs from ESX 3.5 to vSphere and have them stored on the SAN from there? This way you won't have to change any cabling and get a clean migration including a secure backup of the VM until you verified they are working alright in the new environment.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[bulletprooffool]

I'd do this by moving the old ESX hosts into the vSphere Virtual Centre (You can do this without affecting running VMs)

Once in the VC, you can use sVmotion to migrate both the VMs and thier storage over to the ESX4 cluster, then move the old ESX 3.5 host back to the old Cluster.

you can keep both versions attached to the same LUN and you can also manage both 3.5 and 4 hosts from a vSophere vCentre. Lastly you can sVmotion and vMotion from 3.5 to 4, as long as the hosts are in the sameESX cluster.

(if you only want to move some Vms from the source cluster, migrate the remainder off to the other hosts in the source cluster, then remove the host from VC1, add to VC2, migarte VMs and storage, then remove host from VC2, add back to VC1)

[TobiasKracht]

I would simply connect to the 3.5 hosts from my ESX 4 client and start to manage those hosts from that VC. Connect to the LUN from the 3.5 hosts and migrate the VMs to the SAN. All of this should work without issue. It will update the management agent on the 3.5 boxes but you will not be forced up upgrade these to 4 and you can have both 3.5 and 4 hosts connected to the same LUN without a problem!

StarWind Software R&D