Upgrade from ESXi 6.0 to 7.0

[PDIS1]

We are currently on ESXi 6.0.  We have new physical servers that we need to stand up as our new ESXi servers.  While I see that you cannot migrate directly from 6.0 to 7.0 I'm unclear if it's an issue if I'm not using the same physical servers.  If I stand up the new ESXi hosts as 7.0 and I connect them to new Datastores, can I move my VMs from the old datastores connected to 6.0 to the new datastores connected to 7.0 or no, do I still need to go 6.5 first on my new physical ESXi hosts?  

moderator edit by wila: Moved to vSphere Update & Install discussions

[e_espinel]

Hello.
There are several methods to migrate VMs from an old infrastructure to a new infrastructure. This can be with third party backup tools like veeam. By migrating the Luns where the VMs are from the old storage to the new one if the storages are compatible and connected to each other.
If we only have VMware the ideal would be to upgrade the old ESXi to 6.5U3 and then connect them to the vcenter server version 7 of the new infrastructure to be able to migrate the VMs with vmotion to the ESXi with version 7.
a detail to consider is the type of VMware vSphere license we have in the old servers as well as in the new servers.

[pdirmann01 · Accepted solution]

First and foremost, we need to think about your vCenter. It all starts there. If you want to have 7.x hosts, you need to have a 7.x vCenter. Your current 6.0 hosts cannot be managed by a 7.x vCenter (See VMware's Interoperability Matrix - https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php#interop&2=4276&1=). 

If possible, depending on your current vCenter version and the hardware running your 6.0 environment, I would upgrade your existing hosts to 6.5.X, upgrade my vCenter to 7.0U1C, then install 7.0U1C on my new hosts and bring them into the same vCenter. Now we need to talk about your datastores. If your existing data stores are VMFS5 or 6, then you can zone them to the new hosts also and do a simple compute-only vMotion. If they are lower than that, i.e., VMFS3, then I would say to zone a new LUN to the vSphere 7 hosts, then do a compute and storage vMotion of your VMs. 

Not sure of your infrastructure, but an alternate route would be to deploy a new vCenter 7.x appliance, install your vSphere 7 hosts, and add them to the new VCSA. Using either PowerCLI, or the Cross vCenter Workload Migration fling (https://flings.vmware.com/cross-vcenter-workload-migration-utility), you could migrate from the old vCenter to the new.

I personally would try to go with option 1, unless there are limitations such as hardware compatibility.

[PDIS1]

Thank you so much for these responses, they are quite helpful.  My datastores are currently VMFS5.  I understand there are significant improvements in VMFS6.  If I did an in place upgrade of my current ESXi hosts from 6.0 to 6.5 and upgraded to Center 7.0U1C, would you recommend then creating new datastores that are VMFS6 and migrating my VMs from the VMFS5 datastores to the VMFS6 datastores before then moving 7.0 on the new ESXi hosts or wait to move VMFS6 until I migrated to ESXi 7.0 on the new hosts?  

[pdirmann01 · Accepted solution]

I would probably migrate them to VMFS6 data stores at the same time as when you migrate them to the new vSphere 7 hosts. That way you are only vMotioning them one time as opposed to executing a Storage vMotion over to the new VMFS6 datastore, then later a compute vMotion over to the vSphere 7 hosts. Either way you go you'll accomplish the same thing, one just has an extra hop in the path.