Hi,
hoping someone can help me plan a upgrade path from our existing ESX 3.5 , vcentre 2.5 environment to ESXi 5.x and vcentre 5.x
to summarise , this is our current setup:
2x HP DL585 servers (Quad-CPU, dual core per CPU), running ESX 3.5.0, 82663
They are managed via vCentre version 2.5.0, build 84767 (installed on Win Srv2003 R2)
the plan is to upgrade the hardware and the ESX/vcentre versions and migrate the vm's onto this new setup
new hardware: 3x DL360 G8 (Dual CPU, quad core per CPU)
from our vmware portal, this is our licensing situation (amongst other licenses):
>> vSphere 4 Enterprise licenses: 4 Total Quantity:8 CPU(s)
>> vCenter Server 4 Standard
i'm at a loss when it comes to licensing but does this mean with my existing ESX 3.5 licenses, i can only upgrade to ESX 4? and not ESXi 5.x?
is it a case of downloading and installing the ESX operating system on the new servers is 'free', but when joining them to the vcentre vmware datacentre environment, that's when you need to apply these licenses to each new host?
licensing aside, what would be the best way to transition from current setup to new setup.
ie can i introduce the new ESX server 5.x into the existing ESX 3.5 setup and motion the vm's across?
many thanks
Ben