Upgrade licences from 5.0 to 6.0 but keep some old 5.0 and use 6.0 for new hosts

[splity]

Hi,

I have Vcenter 5 installed and ESX5 hosts and I have also installed a second datacenter on a temporary license a vscenter 6 and ESX6 hosts.

I can upgrade my licenses to version 6.0, but I want to keep my old hosts on 5.0, mainly because they are live and haven't done an upgrade before.

Can I keep my old hosts on 5.0?

Will I need to deactivate the old licenses to do that which means I will need to upgrade all the hosts to 6.0 anyway?

Can I do a partial upgrade?

Or do I need new v6.0 licenses?

I have  Windows vCenter Server 5 Standard on vCenter version 5.0

some hosts on VMware vSphere 5 Foundations license

some hosts on VMware vSphere 5 Standard License 

Thanks

[rcporto]

You can divide your vSphere ESXi licenses and upgrade to version 6.0 only the number of licenses that you want to use on the new hosts. See the following VMware KB article: VMware Knowledge Base

[vijayrana968]

You can keep old 5.0 hosts as they are. On your my.vmware.com portal, you only need to get licenses upgraded for the hosts you want to upgrade to ESXI 6.x and keep others as it is. As long as your license is current and not expired you should be able to run vCenter 6 and manage ESXi 5.5 hosts within that.

[bkmemeo]

I am going through a similar dilemma.

Before you do anything, I recommend taking a look at the Interoperability Matrix first.

VMware Product Interoperability Matrices

Simply put ESXi v5.0 will not be supported on vCenter v6.5 version, as ESXi v5.5 is the last one to be "included" under that formula.

So, review your versions carefully, and your options, and then either purchase another vCenter license to support your older VM Hosts, or upgrade all v5.0 hosts to at least 5.5.0 U3 and extend your life cycle, but probably only until v7.0 vSphere shows up....

Regarding your question about upgrades -

You can either upgrade, then migrate the license to another host,

Or,

Not upgrade at all.

The old licenses *might* still work, for just the reason you are describing, (bring up new host on 6.x eval , migrate VMs, decommission 5.0 box, upgrade license, apply to new host)

but probably only for a very limited time (60 days or less in total.)

You ought to be able to connect the new vSphere hosts under eval licenses, and then push the VMs over, and then apply the new upgrade license once the migration has completed, and the 5.x box is offline.  I think that I would put a ticket into Support to validate this method, unless you have time to test the theory yourself....