Updating to Vmware 6 - quick questions!

[Moorsmal]

All, just a few simple questions I hope you can help!

Currently on vmware 5.5 - vcenter is on Windows 2008R2 and we have 9 hosts.

1. Can vCenter 5.5 manage a v6 host? Just ordered a couple of new servers and they come pre installed with ESXi6
2. I am going to move vCenter from Windows to the v6 appliance.  I will simply create it, add a datacenter and then take control of each host one at a time, then I will delete the old 5.5 vcenter server.  Obviously I will lose my historic stats (I'm running an internal db) and I will have to reconfigure HA but apart from that anything else to watch out for?
3. With the appliance what options do I have for disaster recovery?  I have 2 vcenter server licences so was going to install another vcenter on another host but I'm not sure how to connect them if I don't have an external db?

TIA

Stuart

[rcporto]

1. Can vCenter 5.5 manage a v6 host? Just ordered a couple of new servers and they come pre installed with ESXi6

No, vCenter 5.5 can manage only 5.x and 4.x hosts, to manage vSphere 6.0 hosts you will need upgrade your vCenter first.

1. I am going to move vCenter from Windows to the v6 appliance.  I will simply create it, add a datacenter and then take control of each host one at a time, then I will delete the old 5.5 vcenter server.  Obviously I will lose my historic stats (I'm running an internal db) and I will have to reconfigure HA but apart from that anything else to watch out for?

Here is a KB showing the detailed steps to move a vSphere ESXi to another vCenter: VMware KB: Moving a managed ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another vCenter Server

Note that if you are using Distributed Switch, use this another KB: VMware KB: Moving an ESX/ESXi host with vDS from one vCenter Server to another

1. With the appliance what options do I have for disaster recovery?  I have 2 vcenter server licences so was going to install another vcenter on another host but I'm not sure how to connect them if I don't have an external db?

For disaster recovery you may need replicate and/or backup you appliance. But for High Availability you can use the Fault Tolerance enabled for the vCenter virtual machine.

[Moorsmal]

Thanks for your replies.

[rcporto]

You're welcome and don't forget mark answers as correct or helpful.