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compwizpro
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

migrate vcenter server 5.0 to new VM while upgrading to 6.0

Hello,

We have multiple vcenter server environments that are all running vcenter 5.0 with esxi hosts running 5.0u3.  The vcenter servers are currently running on windows server 2008 r2 physical servers with a remote MSSQL server backend.  We want to upgrade to to vcenter server 6.0 and migrate the vcenter server from physical server to a virtual 2012r2 server running within the vmware cluster.  We have some people that have a risk concern with upgrading a vcenter 5.0 server to 6.0 without building a brand-new environment in parallel. 

Given those two things we want to accomplish (upgrade from 5.0 to 6.0 and migrating from physical to virtual) here the current options I found:

  • In place upgrade from 5.0 to 6.0 on existing physical server, then migrate the vcenter from physical to virtual OR
  • Migrate the server from physical to virtual, then upgrade from 5.0 to 6.0 on the virtual server in place

My question, is it possible to migrate from physical server to virtual server in and in the process, install vcenter server 6.0 on the virtual server instead of 5.0 and use the existing database intact?

Basically, I am try to avoid building a 2nd vcenter 6.0 environment in parallel and cutting the VMs over to that environment instead of doing an in-place upgrade?

If the 3rd option is not feasible / possible, are the first 2 options proven enough to work without introducing too much risk?

Thanks for all the help!

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

Welcome to the Community - yes it is possible. Check out the upgrade for the procedure to do that - http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-60/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-60-upgrade...

I have also moved your question to a more appropriate forum.

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MarekZdrojewski

Hi,

To be on the save side, first migrate your physical vCenter Server to virtual leaving the physical vCenter Server untouched in case something goes wrong. Next, create snapshot of the newly virtualized vCenter Server and upgrade it to version 6. When something goes wrong you can always go back to the latest snapshot.

- hth

| Blog: https://defaultreasoning.com | Twitter: @MarekDotZ |
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