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Hello to all and Happy New Year!

I am currently running a VMware vSphere5.5 Essentials production environment with (2) older HP ML350 G6 servers with dual processors quad core and 192GB Ram.

We have a simple network and use a Pure Storage M10 flash array as our main production datastore environment. I have all connected to a 1GB VLAN using HP ProCurve switches.

Currently have no 10GB VLAN connections but want to be able to implement 10GB later on with the new servers.

The volumes on the existing datastores are all vmware VMFS5 and all are working well with backups using Veeam Backup and Replication and Pure Storage Volume Snapshots.

Since the existing HP servers are too old to upgrade directly as they are no longer supported.

So I purchased a completely new VMware vSphere 7x Essentials Plus software with (3) brand new HP ML350 G10 servers with dual 16 core processors and 512GB Ram directly from HPE. I assume I would need to download the HPE custom image software to install VMware on the new servers.

I was just wanting someone with more knowledge to chime in on how to go about this properly while continuing to run my existing VMware setup until the new system is up and going and ready to run the VMs on the new servers.

I assume that I would have to first install VMware7x Essentials Plus on one of the new HP host servers and then next install a new VCenter appliance on that first new HP ESXI server host.

Then install ESXI on the remaining (2) new HP servers and add all 3 new severs to the new VCenter appliance.

Once all new servers have access to the same Datastores on the Purestorage Flash Array I am assuming that I should be able to access the VMs residing on the existing VMFS5 volumes. So if I shutdown and remove a prodction VM from the current old HP servers then I hope to be able to find and open that same VM on the new HP EXSXI host and add to the new VCenter server.

The down time of the VM should only be of a short interval until the production VM is registered to the new vSphere 7x system’s VCenter and hosts but that is more what I’m hoping for but not sure if it is true in real life?

In short I have about 15 production VMs that I need to ultimately get up and running on a whole new VMware 7x setup with as little down time as possible. I also assume that it may be possible to address the migration from VMFS5 to VMFS6 datastores at a later date down the road.

If anyone could advise if my assumptions are reasonable or shed some light on what I may be missing in my summary and how I should go about accomplishing my task.

Once things would be up and working on the new system I would then like to purchase a new 24 port 10GB switch to connect all equipment. The Pure Storage is capable of using 2 10GB ports but I am currently running on 1GB ports as the adapters are 1/10GB. The new servers will all have 4 1GB Ethernet ports as well as 2 10GB Ethernet ports on each server.

Any words of wisdom will be much appreciated.

Thanks for all suggestions.

10 Spice ups
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Since you don’t have vMotion available to you, you’re going to have some downtime. vCenter essentials only allows for three vmhosts, so you’re going to have to get creative to move these VMs

  1. Install ESXi 7 on new hosts

  2. Upgrade vCenter to ESXi7

  3. Add one of the new ESXi vmhosts to your existing vCenter server and move all VMs from an existing server to it. (Shutdown VMs first)

  4. Remove the now empty ESXi 5.5 host and add another ESXi7 host to vCenter

  5. Shutdown the remaining VMs and move them to the new ESXi7 host.

  6. When done, remove the now empty 5.5 host and add your 3rd new ESXi7 host

I’m sure there are other other ways to do this, this is what I thought off off the top of my head and it’s low risk. This should be fast due to not having to change storage.

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I am not aware of a way to upgrade VMFS5 to VMFS6, so you’ll have to create a new datastore on the Pure and migrate VMs to it. When the old VMFS datastore is empty, delete it. The nice thing is the Pure is great at Dedupe AND you can create VMFS volumes than are larger than the store space on the Pure, so this is completely do-able. Again, without vMotion available to you, you’ll have some downtime.

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I have done Datastore upgrades in the past from VMFS 3 to 4, or 4 to 5. You can do those in vSphere easily enough, but I think it wipes the datastore…?

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That’s it…stuff gets erased…I couldn’t remember if you couldn’t upgrade at all or if you lost everything you had when you upgraded.

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Updating VMFS 5 to 6 is a destructive process. All VM’s must be migrated off the datastore prior to starting the process.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147824

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Thanks to all for the replies!

Carl what you say is sort of what I had envisioned as well but I didn’t think I would be able to just upgrade my existing VCenter server appliance from 5.5 to 7x.

Is that a fairly straight forward process? If I upgrade as a first step will that effect any existing running VMs or is it a passive sort of process that will not effect anything only the upgrade itself.

Also I think you are right in what you suggest regarding the Pure storage and creating a new VMFS6 volume and migrate all VMs over to that new volume and then deleting the old one. I agree that would likely be the easiest route to go.

Just s you know my existing install is just Essentials but my new licenses are for Essentials Plus but even without VMotion I think that I can shutdown VMs and cold migrate then over without too much downtime if I do it over night.

Thank you again for your input much appreciated.

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Looks like you’re right, you have to go to vCenter 6.x first. Product Interoperability Matrix

If your vCenter setup is simple/easy, it’ll be easier to just stand up a new vCenter and migrate there. If it’s a little more complex, I’d do the upgrade route. If you do the upgrade, the process itself is straight forward…just make sure that whatever uses vCenter (Veeam, other backup software, ect, is compatible with the version(s) you’re going to)

Upgrading does not affect any other running VMs, just anything that relies on vCenter (see partial list above)

Yes, with essentials and essentials plus, you’ll have to do a cold migration. But again, moving to a new server is very quick, and since you’re with Pure, moving datastores is pretty painfree.

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Is it not possible to just install all new servers with ESXI7x and then install a new VCenter server on the first of the new servers and connect to the VMFS5 datastores to obtain access to the VMs. Close and remove VM from VCenter 5.5 server then register VM with the new server and new VCenter server?

This way the systems run parallel with each other and once all VMs are located on the new servers and new VCenter server then the old stuff could be decommissioned and shutdown. Am I right in assuming this or is it a no and I have to upgrade the old VCenter server first and then introduce a new HP server into the mix and add it to the upgraded VCenter server?

I’m just wondering which approach is better upgrade or new install?

Thanks

EDIT: Sorry I missed your last response. Acknowledged thanks

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I think we cross posted…see what I wrote above your last post.

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Yes, you can do this too. You still have downtime, so it’s 6 one way and 1/2 dozen the other.

Like I mentioned, it depends on how complex your environment is. There is no “wrong” answer, it’s just what works better for you and the one you feel more comfortable with.

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I recommend the “better” approach for your situation is standing up a new vCenter appliance to get to version 7, rather than attempt multiple upgrades to the existing appliance.
My 2cts.

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Okay, I think due to my setup being fairly basic I may be better off starting afresh with a new install.

Would I be correct in assuming that as long as I can connect the new servers to the Pure storage VMFS5 datastores that I should then be able to shutdown production VMs one at a time and unregister them from the VCenter 5x server and re-register them on the new VCenter 7x server host server?

I would try with a lower importance VM first just in case something goes unexpected in the process.

Once I would have all of the new HP G10 servers online and added to the new VCenter appliance and then all the VMs moved over to the new server hosts, then later I would look at creating new VMFS6 volumes as datastores and then move one VM at a time to the VMFS6 datastores.

I will also later have to deal with the Veeam setup to change things around and all the backup configurations and backup copies given a whole new VCenter.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan of attack?

Thanks!

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Yes, that would work fine. If you’re familiar with Power CLI, you can migrate multiple VMs quickly, but if not, what you propose is just as good.

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Thanks to Carl and PCC Bob for your thoughts on this. Much appreciated!

On a side note I thought that Essentials Plus was able to do VMotion because that is why I bought it vs just the Essentials version.

Am I wrong in thinking that Essentials Plus does VMotion?

Not something I will use right now anyway but I don’t know the difference between the versions otherwise.

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I just looked it up…Essentials Plus has vmotion.

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Great thanks for confirming that for me I thought I screwed up for a moment there.

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You can do Storage vMotion with Essentials Plus. Many in this forum have said it’s not included in the license, but it really is. When you migrate a VM, you can select both compute and storage destinations for the migration process.

You cannot migrate storage only … it has to be both compute and storage at the same time. I think that is what causes confusion with the license terms.

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Good to know thanks!

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I was also planning on installing the new HP ML350 servers with ESXi-7x on HPE 32GB MicroSD RAID1 drives for each server.

Is this an acceptable practice or are there downsides to this approach?

Thanks