- Anybody have feedback with the plan below – any issues, roadblocks, suggestions for improvement? Note that I know Update Manager is an option to upgrade an existing host, but we’ve had issues with that in the past, largely because the firewall rules are a challenge to implement.
- Any suggestions on how best to migrate the VMs to the new VCSA? I think that will take the longest time, and is really what concerns me here.
- Description of plan:
Current state:
Multiple Vcenters (mostly Vsphere 5.5 on Windows VM with Oracle backend, one 6.0 VCSA with embedded Postgres and embedded PSC)
Multiple clusters, mostly spread across US, running ESXi 5.1 with a small number of ESXi 5.5 hosts
Multiple distributed switches
no vDI
no vSAN
no FT
Guest VMs use a variety of hardware versions, mostly 7 and 8
Some clusters using NAS, some clusters using SAN for VM datastores
9100 VMs in total (4200 VMs, 4900 VMs) - I've separated them by group that will be migrating
1500 Hosts (1000, 500) in total - I've separated them by group that will be migrating
Objective:
Move all VMs, using existing hypervisors, to vSphere 6, where both hypervisors and VCSA are running version 6.
Migration Plan
Deploy new VCSAs (default configuration with embedded Postgres) to augment existing VCSA
VCSAs will be on new SSO domain
Set up sites, clusters, etc. on new VCSAs
Add one host, configure host profile based on that as a reference host
Move legacy Vcenters to new SSO domain (currently using vsphere.local)
For each host:
Vmotion VMs off of the host
Put host in maintenance mode
Remove host from legacy Vcenter
Re-install ESXi to 6.0 using kickstart (we don’t have autodeploy)
Add host to new VCSA under appropriate cluster
Apply/remediate host per host profile created earlier
Migrate VMs to VCSA