vmware upgrade and migration

[tomj1556]

Hi All,

I have a customer on a 2 node cluster running ESXi 5.5 on the hosts and for vCenter. They have shared storage 1 NFS datastore. I would like to upgrade and migrate to new hardware. They are downsizing so they are looking at 1 physical host. My understanding is that I can only upgrade to esxi 6.7 from 5.5 ? I am planning on using vmware converter to do a v to v migration (cold). Is there anything I should consider in terms of the NFS datastore since I will now be using local storage? 

Thanks !

[fabio1975]

Hello

evaluating the current infrastructure and what they would like to implement the first note of attention is the fact of bringing everything from 2 hosts (with shared storage) to a single host. With a single host, they would lose all the parts of HA and vMotion (it depends on the vsphere license they currently have in use).

It is not clear to me if at the end of the migration there will always be a vCenter and where you want to allocate it and you could consider not updating the current version from 5.5 to 6.7 but migrating the VMs to the new HW with the new version of ESXi. (Consider going to 7.x because 6.7 is in the end of support)

[tomj1556]

Hi Fabio, the customer only has 4 VMs onsite so they don't want to pay for a second host and a new san. I do understand that they should upgrade to 7.0 but they are currently on 5.5 so I didn't think a direct upgrade was possible. 

[8islas]

Hi;

Probably what I would recommend:

Create a new cluster with the new hardware and add those old servers to the new infrastructure. You can then migrate the Storage vMotion machines to the new shared storage. (VMs off recomended)

I agree with fabio, but keep in mind that vCenter 7 can manage ESXi 6.5 hosts. Therefore you would have to upgrade to vCenter and ESXi 6.5 or 6.7, and then again to 7 to avoid downtime.

There are many things to review and take into account to answer briefly.
Verify HCL, Backup Software...

Maybe it's best to start here.

https://core.vmware.com/vsphere-7-upgrade-activity-path

Note that VMware change status of vCenter converter to EOL recently
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2022/02/vcenter-converter-unavailable-for-download.html

Other posibility would be virtual to virtual (2V2) migration, would require downtime but could schedule

Hope it helps.

[continuum]

Can you install the new host before the NFS-datastore is taken offline ?
Then you can simply install new host, attach the NFS-datastore and copy the VMs with cp and vmkfstools.

Ulli

[tomj1556]

Hi, is it possible to do this even though I will be using local storage on the new host ?

[CLINZ]

I'm in agreeance with this post, these are the steps i would perform too,

upgrade vcenter to be able to manage the latest version you intend to go to, i believe you said 6.7

add the new host to the existing infrastructure,

Cold migrate storage and compute to the new Infrastructure

remove old hosts 

solution will now be running from new host but without any HA/DRS etc.

[tomj1556]

Thanks all - unfortunately my customers servers (Fujitsu RX300S6) are not even on the VMware compatibility matrix as they are so old so I think I will need to do a cold storage and compute migration to the new host using converter 

[8islas]

Hi;

Until VMware releases a new version of VMware Converter, for the moment I have used this from:

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter

And here what I use with Veeam perfectly explained, another option.

Physical to Virtual Migration with Veeam | Veeam Community Resource Hub

Hope this help.