06-11-2020 10:34 AM
I have several UCS C220 M3S servers running various Cisco Unified Communications Applications such as Call Manager and Unity Connections. Since the C220 M3S is nearing EOS, we are thinking of migrating to Business Edition 7000M servers. I like to keep all IP addresses the same. How do we actually migrate the UC apps, all running 11.x on the C220 currently, to the new BE 7000?
06-12-2020 04:37 AM
06-12-2020 08:56 AM
That makes sense Mike. A few questions -
I plan to have 1 maintenance window per app. For example, first weekend, down all CUCM nodes on the old hosts and migrate them to the new hosts. Let CUCM run on the new hosts while the CUC, CER, PLM etc. continue to run on the old hosts for a week. Second weekend, migrate the CUC. Third weekend, migrate CER. Do you see any issues with this approach?
What is the reason for doing DRS backup and restore? What if I power down all CUCM nodes on the old hosts, copy the OVA and disk image files to the new hosts and start the VMs?
06-12-2020 09:45 AM
If you plan to move the VMs over I would recommend you to move one at a time. That way you should not get much disturbance to the service.
Moving one service at a time sounds like a good and prudent approach.
06-15-2020 03:04 AM
@tachyon05 wrote:What if I power down all CUCM nodes on the old hosts, copy the OVA and disk image files to the new hosts and start the VMs?
We've done that a few times without issue. Copy the whole contents of each virtual machine folder. Or use Vcenter to move the virtual machine. In one case we had to manually edit the CPU reservation for Unity Connection, there's a Cisco note covering that requirement and giving directions.
06-15-2020 04:39 AM
06-15-2020 07:02 AM
We have done this on UCS SAN attached hosts. Works without issues. VMware should likely behave the same for this independent of the hardware.
06-15-2020 07:17 AM - edited 06-15-2020 07:17 AM
Hi,
Most of the UC applications support VMware vMotion and Copy VM features.
Please remember, the following applies to any use of vMotion with UC apps:
You can go though below URL to know more about these two features before using it:
06-15-2020 08:33 AM
Thanks everyone for all the input. We don't have SAN or vCenter, so it looks like Tony's method would be the easiest where I copy all files from the VM's folder from the old to the new server. I will give this a try after we get the new hardware.
06-15-2020 08:47 AM
You can setup 60-day trial vCenter server for the migration (vMotion) purpose and delete it later once the activity is completed. But make sure you have the correct EXSi licenses on your existing and new UCS server that supports vMotion feature.
Check the License Comparison table in below URL:
06-15-2020 08:53 AM
Vcenter needs an eligible VMware edition on the host that you want to manage. On a new host you can temporarily enable all features, on a trial basis, by removing the licence key. However I'm pretty sure the trial period is 60 days from initial install of the host, so if I'm right this couldn't be done on one that's been in service for a while.
It works perfectly well copying the VM folder. We've even done it by copying to a USB drive and shipping that to site.
10-04-2020 10:07 AM
Great info in this thread.
When migrating UC apps to a new host, either by vMotion, copying the files, or DRS backup/restore, is it necessary to have the new host on the same ESXi version? I imagine it'd be ideal, but can you go from old host at ESXi 6.0 to the new host at 6.7 without issue?
10-04-2020 12:01 PM
Yes that’s possible.
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