Anyone moved to vsphere 6? benefits over 5.5?

[ranj]

Hi Everyone

 

Brief question on anyone using the latest version of vSphere for VMware.

 

Has anyone upgraded to VMware vSphere 6? How is it going? If so did you move from v5.5 or an older release?

 

If the version was v5.5, are they any noticeable improvements moving to v6? are there any gotchas to consider?

 

Any input would be interesting to read about.

[truebluesteve]

Hi Everyone

 

Brief question on anyone using the latest version of vSphere for VMware.

 

Has anyone upgraded to VMware vSphere 6? How is it going? If so did you move from v5.5 or an older release?

 

If the version was v5.5, are they any noticeable improvements moving to v6? are there any gotchas to consider?

 

Any input would be interesting to read about.

 

Been hanging on upgrading until Veeam support it fully. There didn't seem to be an awful lot of obvious changes from the release note - ones that would affect me I mean, and they are persisting with the awful web client!

[FN-GM]

I have upgraded all 7 servers here for our schools. All work fine. Windows 10 support is the main thing with this update.

[Davit2005]

Been hanging on upgrading until Veeam support it fully. There didn't seem to be an awful lot of obvious changes from the release note - ones that would affect me I mean, and they are persisting with the awful web client!

 

I'm pretty sure they do support it with Version 8 Update 2

 

KB2024: Release Notes for Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0 Update 2

 

Can anyone confirm?

 

We are probably going to wait for Summer, currently at vSphere 5.1 so plan to create a new vCenter from scratch, add the hosts and upgrade hosts from there. Means re-creating various DRS rules and importing the host profiles but we will hopefully bypass 5.5 and the upgrading SSO issues which people seem to tell about. Currently have 20 hosts so guess I will be busy for a few weeks upgrading them.

 

The upgrade facility in vSphere Web client seems to be missing the Remediate facility so you can Attach base lines, Scan but then how do you install/apply the updates or am I missing something.

 

I actually quite like the Web interface no I've been using it a few weeks, had a few issues getting it running on Windows 8.1 with Chrome but it seems pretty slick

Edited May 20, 2015 by Davit2005

[ranj]

Thanks for the replies, that is very helpful. My next question is have most stuck with vCentre on a Windows machine with SQL server or has anyone gone to the VCSA with the embedded database? How has that transition been if moving from the Windows version?

 

For small-medium the embedded one seems to cover most requirements and it also saves on a SQL licenses but what is like in the real world. Can you query the database as easy as queries on a SQL server?

[john]

Big thing to think about with the appliance is you are stuffed if you cannot boot the main cluster to start that appliance so you should either have that appliance running on another cluster or stick to a physical one. You can still use MS SQL Express which will work for many schools setups just install it manually before hand and setup the DB and point to it during the vcentre installation then you can continue to use MS SQL as your used to.

[FN-GM]

Big thing to think about with the appliance is you are stuffed if you cannot boot the main cluster to start that appliance so you should either have that appliance running on another cluster or stick to a physical one. You can still use MS SQL Express which will work for many schools setups just install it manually before hand and setup the DB and point to it during the vcentre installation then you can continue to use MS SQL as your used to.

 

I think VMware say SQL express is good for upto a few hundred hosts. More than any individual school will need.

 

We also separate the VC onto a separate farm along with another DC.

[john]

I think VMware say SQL express is good for upto a few hundred hosts. More than any individual school will need.

 

We also separate the VC onto a separate farm along with another DC.

 

 

VMware suggest this :

 

"You may need to migrate from SQL Express to SQL Server if you are close to or exceeding 5 hosts, 50 virtual machines, or 4 GB database size. (In Microsoft SQL Express 2008 and newer, the maximum database size has been increased to 10 GB.)"

 

I wouldn't exceed most schools to go above 5 hosts given how powerful hosts are now the 50 VMs could be exceeded I guess if you run lots of in-house systems and split them all up, but given the DB size increaed in 2008 Express that probably has a little bit more room to shuffle.

[truebluesteve]

I'm pretty sure they do support it with Version 8 Update 2

 

KB2024: Release Notes for Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0 Update 2

 

Can anyone confirm?

 

We are probably going to wait for Summer, currently at vSphere 5.1 so plan to create a new vCenter from scratch, add the hosts and upgrade hosts from there. Means re-creating various DRS rules and importing the host profiles but we will hopefully bypass 5.5 and the upgrading SSO issues which people seem to tell about. Currently have 20 hosts so guess I will be busy for a few weeks upgrading them.

 

The upgrade facility in vSphere Web client seems to be missing the Remediate facility so you can Attach base lines, Scan but then how do you install/apply the updates or am I missing something.

 

I actually quite like the Web interface no I've been using it a few weeks, had a few issues getting it running on Windows 8.1 with Chrome but it seems pretty slick

 

The first person I've heard say they like the web interface!

 

Thanks for the link - we replaced 2 of our 3 hosts a month or so ago and we stayed on 5.5 because of the Veeam issue. I think I will go for the upgrade over the summer!

[Davit2005]

The first person I've heard say they like the web interface!

 

Thanks for the link - we replaced 2 of our 3 hosts a month or so ago and we stayed on 5.5 because of the Veeam issue. I think I will go for the upgrade over the summer!

 

I would actually like it more if it worked on a MAC, I just find I can seem to do more, for instance if I want to upgrade VM compatibility I had to shut down the VM first before I could see it in the options. With the Web Client I can tell it to upgrade compatibility only on the next clean reboot and then schedule task a restart overnight, come in in the morning and the VM is upgraded

[ranj]

Hi

 

bit of an update on this one. As a department we made the decision to go with vSphere 6 rather to 5.5. I have setup a new VM and the vCentre part of it is installed alongside SQL Server 2012 Standard. I have opted to install vCentre with the Embedded platform services controller.

 

I have now got up to the Update manager component but have a few questions regarding VUM for vSphere 6.

 

Am I right in saying we now need 2 separate servers to administer VUM? One has the Update Manager Server role and the other needs to just have the download service? Both services cannot sit on the same server?

As we are only a small to medium size organisation I was wondering if there is a better way around this? We have 5 hosts and approx 150 VMs and unlikely to grow this as our hosts have plenty of resource both in terms of CPU and memory and have been recently commissioned.

 

For VUM can I also use a separate DB on the existing SQL 2012 standard server rather than an embedded SQL express DB. This is the setup I had when we had 4.0 and 5.0 and it worked well.

 

How are others using VUM with the non appliance version of vCentre?

 

Thanks

[john]

Not done a 6 roll out yet but from my reading as we still won't be using the VCA as unless you have 2 separate clusters with the VCA for the cluster on the other so Cluster 1 has VCA for cluster 2 etc..

 

It has also been in a colleagues lab testing quite unstable with a more PSOD than we would like for something production ready and a lot of plugs that use the Vmware API are still having issues with the API despite them supporting it when in our testing, Veeam and BUE say it support it with the right version yet we have seen in testing issues with backups and restores not being perfect which are perfect in 5.5, I was looking at rolling a small office to 6 next month but after this bench testing we have decided to delay another quarter so will be sticking with 5.5 for now.

 

For the DBs you have always had a 2nd DB for VUM but it is on the same host in many cases, so we have 2 DBs on SQL for ours one is the main VMware one and the 2nd is the VUM one so just carry on that practice and we will carry this on in 6.

[Sylv3r]

We are probably going to wait another 6 - 12 months before we make the jump to 6.0 from 5.5. I personally don't feel we will benefit from the additional features at this present moment in time.

[mrbios]

I've moved to vSphere 6, wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't for our new server hardware though. Running VM Hardware version 11 on all VMs and EVC mode set to haswell on the cluster...don't really need EVC turned on any more mind you, so it benefited us in terms of new CPU supported architecture at least

[SimonD]

Am I right in saying we now need 2 separate servers to administer VUM? One has the Update Manager Server role and the other needs to just have the download service? Both services cannot sit on the same server?

 

 

Those two services can't run on the same box.

Download service is intended to provided a shared repo if you have many Update managers, or if you want to separate the repo downloads onto another server.

If you just have one, and are happy having it download there is no need for the Download Service to be deployed.

 

HTH

 

Si

Edited May 28, 2015 by SimonD