Windows vCenter 5.5/6.0 upgrade/migration to VCSA 6.5

VMware clearly announced that windows based vCenter server is deprecated and future versions will be released only as a virtual appliance known as vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). I have helped one of my customers with upgrade / migration of their vCenter 5.5 to 6.5 and I have documented few points which can be useful for others.

Before migration following points should be validated

• All ESXi hosts managed by old vCenter must be at least 5.5 because ESXi 5.1 is not supported by vCenter 6.5 
• All external solutions previously integrated with vCenter must be compatible with vCenter 6.5 

Migration process

1. If you want migrate VMware Update Manager (VUM) configuration you must run migration assistant on VUM windows server. We have experienced some issues with VUM migration therefore we have decided to unregister VUM (VUM extension name = com.vmware.vcIntegrity) and continue with vCenter migration without VUM data migration. 
2. Unregister all external vCenter extensions like (SRM, vSphere Replication, Backup Softwares, Storage Extensions, etc.) which must be registered later back to new vCenter (VCSA)
3. Run Upgrade/Migration assistant on Windows where vCenter service is running
4. Run Upgrade/Migration wizard on administrator workstation and follow upgrade wizard
5. If vCenter is joined into Active Directory, Migration Wizard ask you for AD account which is used to join new VCSA 6.5 host into AD. AD account is entered without domain so account DOMAIN\USER must be entered only as USER.

Stages of data migration from source to target vCenter (approx. 35 minutes)

• 41% - Exporting VMware vCenter Server data - this is the most time consuming part of data migration and progress bar is the whole time in 41% 
• 42% - vCenter Orchestrator data 
• 50% - vCenter Authentication Framework
• 50% - Shutting down source machine 
• 75% - Applying Active Directory configuration
• ??

Setup target vCenter Server and services

• 2% - Starting vCenter Authentication Framework
• 5% - Starting VMware Identity Management Service
• 17% - Starting VMware Component Manager 
• 20% - Starting License Manager
• 25% - Starting VMware ervice Control Agent
• 28% - Starting VMware API Endpoint
• 31% - ???
• 45% - Starting VMware Postgres - takes a long time
• ??% - Starting Web Client
• 62% - Starting vCenter Server
• 65% - Starting Content Library Service
• 68% - Starting ESX Agent Service
• 77% - Starting VMware Update Manager
• 80% - Starting vCenter High Availability
• 85% - Starting VSAN 
• 97% - Starting Vmware performance Charts
• 100% - ???

Importing copied data to target vCenter Server

• 14% - Importing Vmware vCenter Inventory Service data
• ??
• 50% - Import vSphere Web Client data
• ??

After migration

• If you upgraded from vCenter 5.5 you do not have vCenter 6.5 license therefore you have to upgrade your 5.5 license to 6.x on my.vmware.com license portal

Conclusion

We have migrated just vCenter inventory without Events and Performance data. Source vCenter inventory had approx. 1700 virtual machines and around 65 ESXi hosts and the whole migration took 70 minutes. It is not bad if you ask me.