UC migration between UCSs

[Dennis Mink]

I m planning a migration from a ESXi5.5 C220M4 to a ESXI 7.0 C240M6 part of this is Expressways C and E. (v8.8) Cust would like to keep existing hostnames and IPs. Is it possible to move the vmdks (use vmotion) to the new UCS (even though v8.8 is not compatible with ESXi7.0)? and upgrade the expressways to an ESXi 7.0 compatible version once on the new UCS? I know i am breaking compatibility by doing this, just want to understand what the potential implications could be i guess. 

also in general, could I use moving vmdk between UCSs to move UCCX 11.5 across   (as PCD does not support UCCX for migrations)??

thanks

[Roger Kallberg]

If your hosts are in vCenter you can use vMotion to move your VMs from the old ESXi host to a new while the system is operational or in offline mode if you prefer that and if you don’t you need to use off system move methods that requires the system to be in offline mode.

About the upgrade of the Expressways, v8 is really ancient and is since long end of support, why have your customer not had it updated long ago? My recommendation would be to update it to the highest possible supported version on the current ESXi version and then move it across to the new host on the new hardware and do an upgrade to the version you intend to use. That way you’ll likely stay within supported development.

[Dennis Mink]

Thanks Roger.

yes vMotion, however these UCS are not in vCentre (ESXi 5.5), this is what VMware vCentre converter standalone is one of the few options to move to another UCS. I am going to have to move UCCX 10.5 to and ESXi 7.0 host as well.   I guess the underlying question really is, can I move  between 5.5 and 7.0, temporarily breaking compatibility and then upgrade the application on the ESXI 7.0 host and bring the application back into compatibility.  I see a lot of posts out there where people move machines from ESXi 5 to 7, i just want to understand what the risks are as this is going against cisco recommendations. Please note that this customer is allowing a parallel build in the new UCS. so at this point its more around moving data between UCSs

Why it wasn't upgraded before?  that is a good question, particularly because these expressway upgrades are not hard.