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sarkmo
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Storage vMotion from 4.1 to 5.5 ?

I'm in the process of upgrading our vSphere environment. I need to vmotion critical servers from an ESX 4.1 cluster to an ESXi 5.5 cluster. Both clusters are now being managed by a 5.5 vcenter server.

See the attachment. The hosts in the PROD4 cluster are all ESX 4.1 and the hosts in the Production cluster are ESXi 5.5

Can I install 5.5 on another host and add it to the PROD4 cluster so I can vmotion critical VMs to it, then vmotion them to the 5.5 cluster?

Bottom line is how do I get VMs on the 4.1 hosts to the 5.5 hosts with no downtime?

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a_p_
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What I can think of in this case is to add one of the ESXi 5.5 hosts to the old cluster/storage, vMotion the VMs to this host, and then use the vSphere Web Client to migrate both host and datastore to the new cluster. With vSphere 5.5 and the Web Client you can do this even without shared storage.

André

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sarkmo
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MORE background:

Here's the situation. It's more of a question than a problem:

I have configured a new 5.5 vSphere environment with all new hardware - 3 new ESXi Hosts, 2 new SANs, new 5.5 vCSA. I have decommissioned the vcenter 4.1 server managing vSphere 4.1 and have successfully added the 4.1 hosts to a new cluster in the 5.5 datacenter. I have 4 hosts running ESXi 4.1 in one cluster and 3 hosts running ESXi 5.5 in another cluster. All managed by the 5.5 vCSA.

We have been performing cold storage migrations of the VMs on the 4.1 cluster to the 5.5 cluster. But we have several mission critical servers that cannot be down for the time it's going to take to migrate them to the new cluster. Is it possible to detach and remove one of the 4.1 hosts, install 5.1 or 5.5 on it and join it to the 4.1 cluster so that I can vmotion those VMs from the 4.1 hosts to the 5.1 host in the 4.1 cluster, then from that host, vmotion the VMs to the new 5.5 cluster?

I have disconnected and removed the 4th host from the 4.1 cluster so that I can begin the upgrade. See the attachment...

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a_p_
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Do the hosts share the same storage/datastores? In this case you can either vMotion the VM's to the new hosts (assuming CPU/EVC compatibility), or shutdown the VMs, migrate them to the new hosts and power them on. Migrating the VMs without changing the datastore will only take seconds.

André

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sarkmo
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Yes, all hosts share all datastores. But I need to migrate them the the new SAN so I need to do a storage vmotion, not just change hosts. I am unable to do any storage vmotions on VMs that reside on the 4.1 hosts to the 5.5 hosts. We have had to shut down the VMs and migrate them. I need to be able to migrate them to the new 5.5 hosts with no downtime. My question is if I bring a 5.5 host into the 4.1 cluster, will I then be able to migrate VMs from that host to the 5.5 hosts?

I have attached a screenshot of the message I get when I try to migrate. This message leads me to believe that I can connect a 5.5 host to that cluster in order to perform a storage vmotion migration. (?)

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a_p_
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The message you see is only a warning/hint related to the grayed out option to migrate host and datastore simultaneously. You should however - assuming CPU/EVC compatibility - be able to vMotion the VMs to the ESXi 5.5 cluster and then - in a second step - do a Storage Migration (i.e. Change Datastore) with no downtime.

André

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sarkmo
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Yes, I see now... the problem with our environment is that the two SANs are not on the same storage subnet. Even the vlan tagging is different. We've been doing major upgrades to infrastructure and have created new subnets and vlans... during the process, the different vSphere environments were configured with different storage IPs. Only the virtual machine port group and the vmotion vmkernal port group are the same. The thinking was we would migrate all VMs using vmotion and just schedule downtime. Now that has changed.... I'm still working on a solution to remedy this.

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a_p_
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What I can think of in this case is to add one of the ESXi 5.5 hosts to the old cluster/storage, vMotion the VMs to this host, and then use the vSphere Web Client to migrate both host and datastore to the new cluster. With vSphere 5.5 and the Web Client you can do this even without shared storage.

André

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sarkmo
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Thanks. After looking into all possibilities, this makes the most sense.

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