vCenter Upgrade Plan

[pingnithin]

Hi,

We've a vSphere 5.0 infrastructure with its vCenter working as a VM. This VM is suspected to have some OS issues. The database is SQL, which is a hosted in a different server.

We will be upgrading the infra completely to 5.5 within the next 4 months. But since the OS is not stable, I'm planning to provision a new physical server with vSphere 5.5.

My plan would be to:

1. Provision a Windows 2012 R2 server and install vSphere 5.5 in simple mode
2. Create same DSN as in the old server
3. Copy the SSL folder to the new server
4. Stop the vCenter service in the old server
5. Disconnect the network of the vCenter VM
6. Change the IP of the new vCenter to the old one
7. Connect the DB to the new vCenter without re-initializing
8. Connect to the new vCenter using vSphere web client
9. Disconnect and reconnect the ESXi hosts if required

Rollback plan:

1. Reconnect the vCenter VM network (may be I will use the ephemeral vDS option for this, since the network is vDS - Please comment)
2. Start the vCenter service
3. Business As Usual

I've the following doubts

• Can the vDS configuration of 5.0 can be used by 5.5 ? (I think, upgrade option is there, but not sure)
• Will the migration impact the VM connectivity ?
• Will the migration affect the ESXi host connectivity to the new vCenter ?
• Can vSphere 5.5 use the DB initialized by 5.0 ?
• Any other issues ?

Summary

Infra details : 30 ESXi hosts , 1000 VMs

Current:

vCenter version    : 5.0 U3

ESXi Hosts          : 5.0 U3

Database              : MS SQL (not hosted in vCenter)

Networking           : Only dvSwitch (No vSS)

vCenter server      : Virtual

vCenter OS          : Windows 2008 R2 Ent

Other services      : vSphere Update Manager, SRM 5.0.1 , Log Insight 2.0, vCOPS 5.8

Target:

vCenter version    : 5.5 U3

ESXi Hosts          : 5.0 U3

Database              : MS SQL  (the same DB)

Networking           : Only dvSwitch (No vSS)

vCenter server      : Physical

vCenter OS          : Windows 2012 R2 Std

Installation type     : Simple

Thanks in advance

[Nick_Andreev]

I would never try to re-point a new vCenter to the same database, especially if it's another vCenter version. Given how much change there's been since version 5.0, it without a doubt will break things.

You may try to do an in-place upgrade to 5.5 first and then re-point it. Not sure whether this will work, though, either. I'll let others to comment.

Generally I advise to reinstall and then migrate, but given the complexity of your environment, such as SRM and vDS you may want to consider to try and fix your current VM instead.

[pingnithin]

Thanks for the reply Nick.

But the current vCenter OS is not healthy enough for an upgrade. Is there any other way I can migrate ?

[Nick_Andreev]

Then I would reinstall and migrate. You can leverage vDS export/import settings capability to make it less painful.

[pingnithin]

Thanks Nick.

I hope that won't impact the network connectivity except for the network configuration change.

Also had a chance to go through the below sites:

Migrating vCenter from 2012 to 2012 R2 with 5.5 Update 2

http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=3145