Hello everyone,
Happy holiday, What are your thoughts and best practice for my question above. Current environment uses Essential Plus running on vsphere 6.0.
Current environment:
1. 5 esxi 6.0 hosts
2. 1 windows vCenter
3. Features of vCenter not being used
4. No Backup APIs to worry about nor storage APis
Would you build a new VCSA 6.7, then add each ESXi to the vcenter then upgrade each host? I am aware of the best practices and correct order etc of doing the upgrade. But if your current vCenter is not being used why migrate and not build a new VCSA appliance.
Hello Dwayne,
Welcome to VMware communities.
From the description I can understand that you have 6.0 hosts managed by 6.0 windows vCenter server.
Since you are not using any vCenter related features and no backup software integration, you can go ahead and deploy a new vCenter appliance 6.7 and rebuild it however there are few points to be considered which I have explained below:
When you deploy new vCenter appliance 6.7 and add the 6.0 hosts to it :
So if you have made up your mind to go for new vCenter appliance here are the steps:
Deploy new vCenter 6.7 appliance
Once deployed you can power off the source vCenter 6.0 machine
Start creating Datacenter and Clusters as per your requirement in the 6.7 appliance
Now you can add the ESXi 6.0 hosts to the cluster
It would give a warning stating that hosts are already managed by another vCenter and do you want to move it here
Select YES and then start adding all the hosts
Now you can upgrade the 6.0 hosts to 6.5 or 6.7 based on which version the hardware supports
You can upgrade hosts using 6.7 Update Manager
Let us know if this answered to your question.
Regards,
Jonathan
Please mark the response as correct if my answer has helped you solve the issue
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Moderator: Moved to vSphere Upgrade & Install
I'm not sure I would worry about 6.7, but what I'd absolutely do is the following:
At the very least, this'll protect you from vSphere 6.0 going EoGS early next year.
Hello Dwayne,
Welcome to VMware communities.
From the description I can understand that you have 6.0 hosts managed by 6.0 windows vCenter server.
Since you are not using any vCenter related features and no backup software integration, you can go ahead and deploy a new vCenter appliance 6.7 and rebuild it however there are few points to be considered which I have explained below:
When you deploy new vCenter appliance 6.7 and add the 6.0 hosts to it :
So if you have made up your mind to go for new vCenter appliance here are the steps:
Deploy new vCenter 6.7 appliance
Once deployed you can power off the source vCenter 6.0 machine
Start creating Datacenter and Clusters as per your requirement in the 6.7 appliance
Now you can add the ESXi 6.0 hosts to the cluster
It would give a warning stating that hosts are already managed by another vCenter and do you want to move it here
Select YES and then start adding all the hosts
Now you can upgrade the 6.0 hosts to 6.5 or 6.7 based on which version the hardware supports
You can upgrade hosts using 6.7 Update Manager
Let us know if this answered to your question.
Regards,
Jonathan
Please mark the response as correct if my answer has helped you solve the issue
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Did you find this helpful? Let us know by completing this survey (takes 1 minute!)"
Thank you all for your recommendations and feedback. I will potentially go with the route of building a new VCSA then upgrade the hosts.