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What are the VSphere 5.1 to 5.5 Move Considerations?

We are happy right where we are with the free versions of vSphere 5.1 on a dual-processor 6/12 core X5670 with 12GB RAM RAID-10 2TB VMs are hardware version 7, but the data center is forcing us to go with a dual-processor ES-2690 v4 14/28 core with 64GB and a RAID-10 of at least 2TB.  From what I remember, there are at least two issues.
1.  5.1 will refuse to run on any server with more than 32GB.
2.  There is an issue with the Windows client as I recall, or it takes both the Windows and web client or...
3.  Will going to 4TB or 6TB on the array have any impact?

*I believe the VMs at HW Version 7 will work on 5.1 and 5.5

Basically what issues do I need to watch out for, and what are the trade-offs?

Thanks!

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MikeStoica
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First of all you should consider moving to 6.7 and not 5.5, as 5.5 is out of support for almost a year.

Second of all, your hardware might not be on VMware HCL, something that you should check as well.

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MikeStoica
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First of all you should consider moving to 6.7 and not 5.5, as 5.5 is out of support for almost a year.

Second of all, your hardware might not be on VMware HCL, something that you should check as well.

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First of all you should consider moving to 6.7 and not 5.5, as 5.5 is out of support for almost a year.  I haven't worked with the newer

Situation:  We have two servers, both with VMware 5.1.  They have a few VMs on each one.  One of the VMs on each server is a Windows 2003 server.  They each publish NFS volumes.  There there is a 2 FreeBSD VMs on one, and 1 FreeBSD VM on the other.  We've enabled SSH and install ftp access to the vSphere servers and at night, the Windows Scheduler calls ghettoVCB.sh scripts via putty that copies over the .vmx to the NFS volume on the opposite server, sets a snapshot, and uses vmkfstools to do a -thin clone to the same location.  Since we have portable IP addresses, when there is a server issue, we simply register and start the previous backup.  This is what we are trying to bring to the new data center and servers.  The hardware versions of the VMs is 7, which according to the matrix is compatible at least up to 6.7 U2.

1.  Question: Can we still do this with 6.7 U2?

2.  Question: During the 5.1 to 5.5 transition, the 5.5 client required 2 pieces, the Windows client and the web client.  For a long time you had to buy the client as part of something else.  For sometime after that, the web client had only partial functionality.  What is the client situation today?  Is there a free version of 6.7 with a client that includes what I need?

3.  Question: We currently have a 2TB Hardware RAID-10 on our servers.  Are there any disadvantages to going larger?

Second of all, your hardware might not be on VMware HCL, something that you should check as well.

We currently are, and made sure that the new ones would be also.

Thanks TONS!

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First of all you should consider moving to 6.7 and not 5.5, as 5.5 is out of support for almost a year.

I evaluated the different versions.  6.0 would be the easiest for and timing is critical at the moment:
- With 6, I have no TLS hoops to jump through for my 2003 maintenance servers which only do TLS 1.0.
- 6.5 has no TLS hoops, but with 6.0, I can create and maintain hardware version 7 from the Windows client, and version 6.  Hardware version 7 currently keeps things portable with another system.

When things aren't critical, I will roll out 6.7 because there are lot fewer obstacles than I anticipated and I like what I see.

Thanks!

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