PLEASE HELP : Migrating VMs from old ESX4.1 hosts to new ESXi 5.1 hosts

[jferguson1]

hello, we are trying to migrate VMs from old blade server(Intel e5504) running esx 4.1 to new blade servers(intel x5675) running 5.1.

we upgraded vCenter to 5.1 to support new hosts. please help me go further. plan is to add 5.1 hosts on same cluster and then migrate VMs from 4.1 to here. please let me know if i need to worry about EVC or something else. thank you in advance.

Jeff

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

if you just want to migrate the VMs only once from the old to the new hosts (i.e. decommission the old hosts), you may consider to cold migrate the VMs. This way you don't have to "restrict" the new hosts with an EVC baseline for just a single migration.

André

[peetz]

I would leverage EVC for this migration, because this is exactly a scenario that EVC was designed for.

After all old hosts have been dismissed, you can raise the EVC baseline to match all capabilities of the newer CPUs.

This is possible without powering down any of the VMs.

[jferguson1]

Hi Andre thank you for taking your time to reply back.....if possible i would like to avoid any downtime as most of the vms are in production and would effect the users big time.....

Hi Peetz thanks you for taking time to help me out....i am really interested to do this migration without any downtime so please point me to any link/documentation/steps which can explain the migration in more detail. thanks a lot.

[jferguson1]

Hi Andre

i have been waiting for some response. i newbie to this and really need some instructions here to do the task. please help.

please let me know any doc which will help me migrating vm from 4.1 to 5.1 without turning off any vms. would i be needing EVC turned on anywhere ??

thanks

J

[Gortee]

J,

This is a fun situation.  The best document on EVC is VMware KB: Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support   The simple answer is yes you can avoid downtime as long as they have shared storage (both host can see the VMFS luns) and your setup your EVC correctly.  You will want to setup EVC for the highest allowed setting for all your hosts.  Then when you migrate off the old hosts raise the level.   I would really try this on a test VM first to make sure you don't get any downtime from the action.

Thanks,