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I have an ESX farm running the same 4 physical hosts (identical hardware) on vCenter 5.1.

I received a bunch of 4 new physical servers with a newer hardware and I have to replace the old ones by these ones.

What are the best practices to avoid any interruption ? Can I avoid using EVC?

Thanks

DJYod
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2 Answers2

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If it's 100% identical kit then you don't need EVC at all, although it does come in handy sometimes and I don't see why anyone would avoid it. In terms of process simply add the new host to the cluster, then with DRS set to automatic mode put the old hosts into maintenance mode then remove them when they're 'empty'.

Chopper3
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  • What are the steps to migrate the VMs without EVC on different HW ? – DJYod Sep 22 '13 at 18:06
  • I thought these were the "same identical hardware"? but if your new hosts are 'newer' than the old then you don't need to use EVC, only if you're going backwards. – Chopper3 Sep 22 '13 at 18:53
  • I edited the question, sorry, I wasn't clear enough. So you mean that VMWare is capable to vMotion running VM from old CPU to newer CPU without interruption ? hmm, impressing – DJYod Sep 22 '13 at 20:34
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Best practice?

  1. Configure the new hosts appropriately

  2. Add the new hosts to the appropriate Data Center

  3. Add the new hosts to the appropriate Cluster

  4. Migrate the virtual machines to the new hosts

  5. Remove the old hosts from the Cluster

  6. Reconfigure HA and DRS as appropriate if needed

joeqwerty
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