Side by Side VCSA upgrade

[2000DXP]

Hello all, I hope you are well.

I have a VCSA with embedded PSC running version 6.5 Build 15259038 with about 40 stand-alone ESXi hosts and four clusters that have 2 hosts in each cluster.

I want to upgrade to VCSA with embedded PSC version 6.7 by standing up a brand new instance in a different physical Datacenter and then migrating the ESXi hosts over from 6.5 to 6.7 one by one.

My first thought is regarding the licenses and if I can copy the licenses off the 6.5 instance and install them onto the 6.7 instance and run both solutions at the same time until the hosts have been migrated over and the 6.5 instance decommissioned.

Also is it a supported solution if the VCSA is running as a VM on one of the ESXi hosts that it manages?

Any steer would be greatly appreciated.

Regard's,

Dave

[scott28tt]

@2000DXP 

Moderator: Moved to vSphere Upgrade & Install Discussions

[ashilkrishnan · Accepted solution]

Hi @2000DXP ,

1. If you deploy a new vCenter, it would be running on evaluation mode for 60 days. This should give you enough time and once you are done with moving hosts, you can assign the license to new vCenter. 

Note: If your ESXi hosts are configured with distributed switches, you need to move the networking to standard switches before disconnecting from existing vC.

2. Yes, you would find it very common running vCenter as a VM on same hosts it is managing.

Hope that helps. 

Please mark my comment as the Correct Answer/Kudos if this solution resolved your problem

[2000DXP]

Hello ashilkrishnan, I hope you are well.

Thank you very much for the advice, much appreciated.

Regards,

Dave