vCenter Upgrade Preparation Questions

[Leigh Szegedi]

I am planning a vCenter Server upgrade from 7.0.3 to 8.0.2 and currently reviewing the 

prerequisites.

 

One of the prerequisites is 

 

If you plan to assign a static IP address and an FQDN as a system name in the temporary network settings of the appliance, verify that you have configured the forward and reverse DNS records for the IP address.

 

My understanding is a new vCenter Server Appliance gets created and settings are copied 

from the existing Appliance to the new Appliance.

 

After a successful upgrade does the original vCenter Server appliance get deleted or 

do I need to manually delete it?

Does the new vCenter Server Appliance retain the new name or does it apply the name of the existing vCenter Server Appliance?

[rbritt71]

After the migration, the IP address and host name of the old appliance are applied to the new upgraded appliance of version 8.0. At the end of the upgrade, the temporary IP address is released and the old appliance is powered off.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/vsphere-vcenter-upgrade/GUID-30485437-B107-42EC-A0A8-A03334CFC825.html

If it's still there after your upgrade, i'd just "remove from inventory" until you're satisfied that it's of no use in the future.

[pcgeek2009]

During the upgrade process, all of the data and configurations are copied from the old vCenter to the new one. Once applied, the upgraded vCenter takes on the name, IP address, etc of the old one. The temporary information is mainly needed for network access to copy the data between the two appliances. The old one is powered off and once you are sure you are good, you will need to manually delete it. 

[Leigh Szegedi]

Thank you both so much for the help and confirmation.  Very much appreciated