Migrate to vSphere 6.0 Update 2m

Vmware recently released vSphere 6.0 Update 2m , which is the supported way to migrate  from a windows based vSphere 5.5 to the appliance based vSphere 6.0. It’s a smooth process once you get the prerequisites addressed. For us the biggest issue is with 6.0 update manager is still not supported on the appliance. (This week vmware announced vSphere 6.5 which does include update manager on the appliance)

If you’re like us that has an single box install of vSphere you’ll need to move update manager to another server before you start the migration wizard.

There is a great step by step, three part write up on the entire process on the VMware vSphere Blog.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/09/preparing-for-a-vcenter-server-migration-using-the-vsphere-6-0-update-2m-migration-tool-part-1.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/10/preparing-vcenter-server-migration-using-vsphere-6-0-update-2m-migration-tool-part-2.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/10/preparing-vcenter-server-migration-using-vsphere-6-0-update-2m-migration-tool-part-3.html

We are preparing our environment now, before we can migrate we have to setup a test vsphere appliance and do some API testing. We currently read from the vcenter SQL DB to produce some billing reports and we have to make sure we can get all the same details with the API.

Have you used the migration tool? What was your experience, let us know in the comments below.