vSphere 5.0 and 5.5 ESXi cluster

[frcouture]

Hello,

We are planning to upgrade from vSphere 5.0 to 5.5 in 2015.  We are actually in a process of buying new servers and I would like to know if I can have both ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.5 in the same cluster.  If it is possible I will vMotion the VMs from ESXi 5.0 servers to ESXi 5.5 servers and get the ESXi 5.0 out of the cluster.

Thank you.

[BenLiebowitz · Accepted solution]

Yes, you will have to upgrade vCenter to 5.5 first and you cannot upgrade the virtual hardware past version 9 until all hosts have been upgraded.  Also, you cannot upgrade the datastores to VMFS5 until all hosts have been upgraded. 

Hope this helps...

[vfk]

Hi, you can have a mixed cluster of vSphere 5.0 and vSphere 5.5

[frcouture]

Thank you Ben for your answer.

We also use Site Recovery Manager as our solution for disaster recovery.  I understand that I must upgrade vCenter first.  Do you recommend to upgrade SRM after or before ESXi Servers?

Thank you.

[BenLiebowitz]

SRM gets upgraded first.  Here's a KB article that lists the order to upgrade...

VMware KB: Update sequence for vSphere 5.5 and its compatible VMware products

Also, here's a KB with 5.5 best practices.

VMware KB: Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5 best practices

[frcouture]

We have two vCenter servers in linked mode on two physical sites.  Should I break the linked mode before upgrading the vCenter servers and reconfigure it after the upgrade?

Thank you.