VMware vSphere 6.5 Upgrade Considerations
I recently worked with a customer that had a well developed vSphere environment including;
- vCenter 5.5 U3
- vROPs 5.8.5
- SRM 5.5.1
- ESXi 5.5 U3
The reason I was working with them was to offer some advice for upgrading the environment up to vSphere 6.5.1, vROPs 6.6.1 and SRM 6.5.1.
This upgrade path is complicated by the need to keep the data held within SRM. Each of the components outside of SRM is capable of being upgraded directly from 5.5 U3 to 6.5.1… SRM can not, it must first go from 5.5.1 to 6.0 to 6.1.2 to 6.5.1.
Each of those versions of SRM has different compatibility requirements with other elements of the vSphere stack. So the requirements of SRM drive the upgrade sequence of the other components.
Read on for upgrade considerations for each of these components.