Upgrade from vSphere 5.0

[pingnithin]

Hi,

We are planning to upgrade our vSphere 5.0 infrastructure (around 30 hosts and 3 vcenters) to either 5.5 or 6.0.

Few of my friends suggested to upgrade to 5.5 as they think that, it is the stable version. But personally, I would prefer to upgrade to 6.0.

What are the challenges involved in upgrading to 6.0. Will the upgrade affect my VMs after hardware upgrade.

Or should I got with 5.5 ?

Background info :

We've the following tools available :

• Current vCenter is not using SSO. What are the challenges involved in upgrading this vCenter to SSO based vCenter.
• My datastores are FC based.
• I've the following tools available:

  • VMware vCOPS

  • VMware LogInsight

  • VMware SRM

    Thanks in advance

    Regards,

    Nithin

[JeremieM · Accepted solution]

Hi,

First of all check all the compatibility. It means that you have to validate that your backup solution, storage  and  physical servers are compatible with your target (vsphere 5.5 / vsphere 6.x and SRM).

For the vCenter 6, I don't think that there is a kind of in place upgrade from version 5.0.

It means that you should maybe upgrade your vCenter to version 5.5 and then to version 6.

What I recommand with your number of vCenter is to have different PSC. Instead of using a full vCenter, use external PSC is the best way for your architecture.

You can install new vCenter too and re-import the esxi inside too ...

Regards,

Jeremie