OUR VSPHERE 4.1 TO 5.0 MIGRATION EXPERIENCE

By Mike Armstrong

& David Annett

Agenda

– New vSphere 5 Features

– Pre Upgrade Considerations

– Our Upgrade Challenges and Design

– Upgrade & Migration Tasks

– Post Migration Tasks

– Q & A

New vSphere 5 Features

– ESXi Only! Firewall added, new deployment options, can run in memory

– Improved Deployment with Image Builder and Auto Deploy

– Increased VM Maximums, 32vCPU’s and 1TB Ram, more guest OS supported

– VMFS 5, max size of 64TB, 1MB block size, 100,000 files limit

– Storage DRS, create datastore clusters and balance based on used space and latency

– Network Improvements, port mirroring, NetFlow collection, QoS for user defined traffic

– vCenter Appliance and Storage Appliance (VSA), designed for SMB market

– New Licensing, base on vRAM

Pre-Upgrade Considerations

– Upgrade ESXi and vCenter licenses on VMware License Portal, need to apply licenses after upgrade or install

– Select to upgrade or perform new install

– Consider high availability options for vCenter and database, physical or virtual

– Document environment and permissions, can use Power CLI script get-vipermission -entity (get-inventory)

– Perform a health check on the environment and resolve any issues prior to upgrade

– Verify there is sufficient SAN storage to create new LUN’s with VMFS5 version

– Consider options to upgrade guest VM Tools, Hardware versions (Update Manager) and vSphere client

Upgrade Challenges and Design

Issues- – Multiple versions, datacenters at 3 physical sites

– Many production VM’s , 7 x 24 operation, limited maintenance time

– Mix of new and old environments, little documentation on installation

– Considerable use of VDS in all the datacenters

– vShield Zones was previously installed on several ESX hosts

– vCenter and the database server, both virtual, had experienced multiple failures, VMware support recommended new install

Upgrade Challenges and Design contd.

Goals- – Make vCenter highly available

– Do clean install whenever possible, ESXi hosts, storage LUN’s

– Create new access permissions to vCenter

– Document the design and installation procedures

– Limit the downtime of VM’s during the migration

Upgrade Challenges and Design contd. Upgrade details- – Created a separate Management Cluster with four ESXi 5.0 hosts

– New installation of vCenter 5.0 as a VM

– Implemented vCenter Heartbeat, 2 VM’s on separate SAN storage

– Installed new instance of vCenter Server and Update Manager, installed the databases on a Production Microsoft SQL Cluster

– Duplicated Port Groups of VDS to a VSS to migrate VM’s without network interruption

– Use a designated “shuttle” ESXi 4.1 host to migrate VM’s from 4.1 to 5.0

– Perform new installation of ESXi 5.0 on hosts, formatted LUN’s with VMFS5

– Implemented Update Manager to patch hosts, update VM tools and hardware versions

– Thin Appe’d the vSphere 5.0 client and deployed to end users

Upgrade Challenges and Design contd.

vShield cleanup: Knowledge Base - 1031044

Booting the ESX host fails with the error: initialization of module dvfilter failed

To resolve this issue:

Run this command to load the dvfilter module: #esxcfg-module –e /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/dvfilter Remove the IP address from /Net/Net.DVFilterBindIpAddress.

Reboot the ESX host.

Error on console of host Bad IP address in settings via vSphere UI

vCenter Heartbeat:

2 vCenter servers replicated via Heartbeat, on 2 separate LUNS, each on a different storage device (XIV and DS4000)

Before and after networking:

Legacy vShield still there:

New migration VSS ports:

Shuttle host networking:

Shuttle host now has corresponding VSS ports for each DVS port group

Shuttle host has to be added back into the DV Switch, as part of this, use the migrate networking wizard to move the guests back into the proper DVS port groups:

Post Upgrade Tasks

– Upgrade Update Manager , or install new

Post Upgrade Tasks contd.

– Create folder structure for VM’s

– Apply Updates at the folder with Update Manager

Post Upgrade Tasks contd.

– Use Roles to apply granular permissions

– Apply permissions to folders

Post Upgrade Tasks contd.

– Use Update Manager for VM Tools and hardware version updates, and for future host patching

Post Upgrade Tasks contd.

– Update Manager Rollback Options when applying VM Tools and hardware version updates

Resources • vSphere 5 Upgrade Guide

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html

• Upgrading to ESXi 5.0 best practices http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2005102

• Installing Update Manager 5 http://www.vladan.fr/vsphere-5-installing-vum-vmware-update-manager/

• vSphere 5 What’s new class http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_subject=24417