Upgrading to vSphere + from SQL Express to SQL 2005 + new server for vCenter

[caddo]

Hi everyone,

this is the scenarion i'm having today:

A simple two node HA/DRS cluster with vCenter 2.5 update 4 and two esx 3.5 update 4.

The environment grew enough to move from SQL Express to a standard SQL 2005. In the process i want to upgrade the environment to vSphere and move the vCenter to a different box.

I am pretty familiar with the vSphere upgrade process but i donìt know how to move the vCenter to another machine AND i don't know how to go from Express to standard version of SQL in the process. (I have a SQL machine ready for this use)

I don't know how to approach all the changes here, i was thinking it would be nice to move everything to the new DB and machine so that i could go on with the vSphere upgrade, if this makes sense or not i'm waiting for your ideas.

I hope someone will give me some indications about moving from SQL Express to SQL and how to move vCenter to a different server (of course with a different server name and IP address)

Thanks in advance for your support.

[MartenTran]

I found this on moving the DB. I did it a while back and was using windows authentication and had to change to SQL authentication..

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=796089...

[jb12345 · Accepted solution]

I just did something very similar a couple Sundays ago and it was really easy. See the section of the Upgrade Guide that talks about Upgrading to vCenter on a Different Machine... (starts at p. 49). We went from SQL 2003 32-bit on Windows 2003 32-bit to SQL 2005 64-bit on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit. Both are running as VMs - vCenter 2.5 is still there only as a license server - until I get all of my hosts upgraded.

[caddo]

Thanks people, that was very useful information.

[charquick]

Windows 2008 R2 64 is not even listed on the vsphere compatibility matrix and 2008 R2 32 only supports guests OS customization.

Can it be installed on R2, but it's not supported by VMware? Just wondering because I wanted to install vcenter on 2008 R2 64 bit.