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ndmuser
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vCenter Upgrade to ver 5.5

I have vCenter 5.0 running on WIndows 2003 R2 HP Proliant DL380 G4 server. We have small environment, just 4 ESXi hosts and 50 VMs so I am using MS SQl 2005 Express.

I would like to upgrade vCenter to version 5.5

Windows 2003 R2 is not supported for vCenter 5.5.  HP DL380 G4 is not supported/certified for Windows 2008 R2.

It looks like my only option is to install  fresh vCenter 5.5 on Windows 2008 R2 on new hardware. Smiley Sad

Is there any other options? is it possible to migrate database or any other settings from my vCenter 5.0 to a new vCenter 5.5? How to make upgrade process less painful?

Thank you for your help and advice!

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Is there a reason why you woudln't want to setup vCenter Server as a virtual machine?

If you don't have a bunch of vCenter Server settings (e.g. permissions, alarms, resource pools...) and don't really care about the historical performance data, you may consider to just create a new vCenter Server (with the number of hosts, I'd suggest you take a look at the vCenter Server Appliance).

André

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GMCON
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would say go with making the vCenter a VM.  If you want to retain your cluster and host configs, things like that but also want to be able to use VUM then just back up your database and restore the new database on the VM then install vcenter.

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vNEX
Expert
Expert

Hi,

I would strongly recommend you to:

1. Build a new virtual machine (with Windows Server 2008 R2) on your existing ESXi hosts hardware.

2. On existing vCenter 5.0 running on Windows 2003 R2 install and run Data Migration Tool below and follow steps in KB article:

VMware KB: Migrating to vCenter Server 5.0 using the Data Migration Tool

This tool will do following:

- back up VirtualCenter or vCenter Server configuration data such as port settings, SSL certificates, and licensing information

- If your database is a SQL Server Express database that is local to the VirtualCenter or vCenter Server machine, the Data Migration Tool backs up the database and restores it to the destination machine.

- If VMware vCenter Update Manager is installed on the same machine as VirtualCenter or vCenter Server, the Data Migration Tool backs up the vCenter Update Manager configuration and restores it to the destination machine.

3. After you will have all data migrated and vCenter server 5.0 running on W2K8 R2 VM follow sources below to upgrade to vCenter 5.5 release:

VMware KB: Methods of upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5

VMware KB: Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5 best practices

Hope this will help you

Regards,

P.

_________________________________________________________________________________________ If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards, P.
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