Replacing Existing Host with New Host/Hardware

[musc_county_is]

We are in the process of replacing our older ESXi 5.0 hosts that unable to be upgraded to ESXi 5.1 with new hardware that will support ESXi 5.1 and beyond.  The existing hosts are members of a vCenter cluster and vCenter has been updated to the latest version.  We have pre-installed ESXi 5.1 on the new hosts and tried to configure them to match the existing hosts' configurations, with the exception of the hostnames and management network IPs.

First, are we on the correct path to replace the existing hosts?

Second, what are the next steps that we would take?

We have read different posts that seem to follow the steps below, but want to make sure that our incenses are applied correctly, that we do not miss any major, or minor, steps for iSCSI, reusing the existing ESXi hosts' names and IPs, or anything else that will cause the replacement to fail.

1. vMotion VMs from existing host to another host

2. Remove the existing host from vCenter

3. Shut down existing host

4. Power on the new host

5. Add the new host to vCenter cluster

6. Apply necessary configuration changes

7. vMotion VMs to new host

8. Follow the same steps on the next new host

Are we missing any steps?

[TomHowarth]

that will work,  from what I am reading you have two 5.0 hosts that you wish to replace with two shiny new 5.1 hosts, with the same host names and IP addresses for management and iSCSI connections etc.

so if that is correct then what you have laid out will work.

[TedH256]

looks good - I am sure you know that the new hosts have to have access to the existing storage luns (since you are using iSCSI) in order to vmotion guests to them. Other than that, pretty straight-forward!

[musc_county_is]

Yes, we have considered that and forgot to include in the post.  We will be updating the target security information for the LUNs to reflect the host changes once the hostname and IP changes are made.

Thanks for catching and mentioning that step.

[JagadeeshDev]

You are on right track.

As said , ensure you have an access to the datastores , and the network configurations ( VM port groups, VLAN if any, iscsi, vmotion etc ,. )

You are good to go. 

[masudhussain]

Hi, I would suggest you before going to add those new host to your cluster , make sure whether CPU of new physical box is EVC supported which is currently configured in your current cluster. different generation of CPU and make may cause trouble in vmotion.

[Kahonu84]

Aloha,

We are about to do the same thing. Configurations will not change. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there is a folder(s) on each ESX host

that if we copy from the old hardware to the new, it will save us alot of work and grief. Was I dreaming??

Mahalo,

              Bill

[Alistar · Accepted solution]

Aloha You were right, that magical file is called state.tgz: VMware KB: Locally restoring an ESXi configuration from state.tgz backup