How to upgrade Essentials plus to Standard AK ?

[adrianych]

Hi all, I need some advise and suggestions.

I used to have 2 sites each running VMware Essential Plus (3x Dell Servers with 2 CPU each).

We moved offices and combined the 2 sites to a Co-location facility. I then upgraded the VMware 4.0 + 5.0 Essential Plus to VMware 5.0 Standard AK (12 CPUs).

The problems I have which both my sales and their "technical consultants" do not understand are :

i. I have 2 vCenters - vCenter A with Host 1, Host 2 & Host 3 + vCenter B with Host 4, Host 5 & Host 6

ii. My vCenters are running SQL Express on Win2K8R2 servers (at that point I do not forsee running that many VMs on Essentials Plus)

So far this is what I have managed to do for the past few weeks:

- move all local datastores to a SAN (Dell Equallogic)

- Install the VMware Stanard AK license to vCenter A and Host 1, Host 2 & Host 3

- ALL hosts are able to access the datastores (I have 19 Datastores and all 6 hosts have 19 datastores)

- I managed to "move" host 4 from vCenter B to vCenter A (but i need to vMotion all VMs out of host 4)

I need advise and suggestion on how can I do the following :

1. Move the Host 5 & Host 6 to vCenter B without the need to power off the VMs as far as possible

1i. Remove Host 5 & Host 6 from vCenter B

1ii. Delete or remove vCenter B (Note that vCenter B is a VM resideing in Host 6)

1iii. Add Host 5 & Host 6 to vCenter A

2. Upgrade to SQL from SQL Express to SQL Std (I have 6 hosts and approx 60VMs)

Thanks

[illvilja]

Hi!

Can't you just add the remaning hosts (4 & 5) to vCenter A without using vMotion?

vCenter A with four hosts, is it running a single cluster?

Here is a VMware KB about upgrading SQL from Express to Standard

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1028601

[adrianych]

I have VMs running on vCenter B for Host 5 and Host 6.

Wouldn't I need to remove them from vCenter B ?

Thanks for the SQL KB.

[illvilja]

There's no need to stop or remove the VMs running. You can disconnect and remove the hosts on vCenter B and just add them to vCenter A.

--- Martin

[adrianych]

Thanks....it worked for Host 5....but failed for host 6 as vCenter B was on host 6.

All I did was power off the vCenter and then tried adding from vCenter A then it worked.

Later I powered up vCenter B, disconnect host 5 & 6 then removed them.

Lastly I deleted vCenter B from host 6

Thanks to all.....