1. Introduction
This vSphere Pre-requisites Checklist describes the requirements and pre-requisites necessary
to begin planning for the upgrade of an existing VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere.
This Pre-requisites Checklist is intended for those involved in planning, designing, and upgrading
an existing VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere. The intended audience includes the roles listed below:
• Solution Architects responsible for driving architecture-level decisions
• Consultants, Partners, and IT personnel, who require knowledge for deploying and upgrading the vSphere infrastructure
it is assumed that they have knowledge and familiarity with VMware Infrastructure and have
access to the VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere product documentation for reference.
VMware has made this document available early as a way to help our customers better prepare
for a vSphere migration. We will post an updated version of this document at vSphere GA that
includes links to a number of additional materials. For now, we’ve included some of that
information in this document to give you an idea of what will be available on vSphere GA.
This content is considered in draft.
2. Upgrade to vSphere Pre-requisites
This checklist will detail pre-requisites identified either as Required, Optional or Recommended
that should be reviewed and completed first ahead of starting to work on the migration from
VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere.
Required
If any of the following VMware products are being used with the target
environment, please consult* the most current product compatibility
matrix available here:
o VMware Lab Manager
o VMware Stage Manager
o VMware Lifecycle Manager
o VMware Site Recovery Manager
o VMware View / VDM
* This step should be completed prior to any migration activities in order to
determine eligibility for upgrade/migration to VMware vSphere.
Required
Ensure that the systems, I/O devices, and storage arrays are on the VMware certified compatibility list for VMware vSphere.
http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl
Required
Confirm your virtual machine operating systems are supported on VMware vSphere against the VMware Certified Guest Operating System list.
2.1 VirtualCenter / vCenter Server
Required
Ensure that the VirtualCenter Server is version 2.0 or above (VirtualCenter 1.x cannot be upgraded and will require a clean installation of vCenter Server 4.0)
Required
Ensure that the hardware and/or virtual machine dedicated for VirtualCenter meets the minimum system requirements for VMware vCenter 4.x
(see vCenter Server Hardware Requirements in ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html)
Optional
It may be necessary to increase the memory and CPU of the hardware and/or virtual machine depending on the future requirements of the environment
Required
Ensure that the VirtualCenter Server database is supported (Oracle 9i and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 are no longer supported.
The database can be upgraded to the supported versions first)
(IBM DB2 database requires a clean installation of vCenter Server 4.0)
Existing unsupported databases must be upgraded to a supported version before upgrading the VirtualCenter Server (see vCenter Server Database Requirements in ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html)
Required
Ensure that the necessary patches required for database schema upgrade support are applied
(see table 3-3 of vSphere Upgrade Guide – which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html)
Required
Reconfirm that you have the login credentials, the database instance name, the database server name (or ODBC system data store name – DSN) that will be used by the vCenter Server database
Required
If the database is 64-bit Oracle, make sure that the default installation path of C:\Program Files(x86) is changed to remove the parentheses ().
Do not include any special characters in the installation path
Required
Ensure that for Microsoft SQL database, the system DSN is using SQL Native Client driver
Required
Ensure that the Oracle and Microsoft SQL databases have the appropriate permissions
(Check the Database Prerequisites section in Chapter 3 of the vSphere Upgrade Guide which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html)
Required
Ensure that the installation path of the existing VirtualCenter does NOT have commas (,) or periods (.)
Required
Confirm that you have READ permission for the Network service account on the root of the system disk of the vCenter Server installation; this is typically your C:\ drive (NOTE: The installer will prompt you if this is not set)
Required
Confirm that the VirtualCenter Server system name is no more than 15 characters
Required
Ensure that the following ports are not used by any existing application on the vCenter Server system and that there are no firewalls preventing these ports from/to the vCenter Server system
o HTTP – port 80
o HTTPS – port 443
o LDAP – port 389 (needed even if not using linked mode)
o SSL – port 636
Recommended
Ensure that you have taken a complete backup of VirtualCenter, VirtualCenter database, templates in VirtualCenter repository, license files, certificate files before the install or upgrade
Required Ensure you have the VMware vCenter Server 4.0 installation media or ISO image
2.2 VMware Infrastructure Client / vSphere Client
Required
Ensure that the operating system supports vSphere Client (see vSphere Client and vCenter Server Software Requirements in ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html))
Required
Ensure that the hardware supports vSphere Client (see vSphere Client Hardware Requirements in ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide which can be sourced at
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html)
Required
Ensure that the Internet Explorer (IE) security settings are set to enable Allow scripting of Internet Explorer web browser control (if the IE security settings are set to High)
2.3 VMware Update Manager
Recommended
Ensure that you have taken a complete backup of VMware Update Manager and Update Manager database before the install or upgrade
Required Ensure that the following ports are not used by any existing application on the VMware Update Manager system and that there are no firewalls preventing these ports from/to the VMware Update Manager system
o SOAP – port 8084
o Web – port 9084
o SSL – port 9087
2.4 VMware ESX/ESXi
Required
Ensure that ESX/ESXi version is version 3.0 or above (ESX 2.x cannot be upgraded and will require a clean installation of ESX/ESXi 4.0. Although ESX 2.5.5 with at least 100MB space in /boot can be upgraded to 3.x and then to 4.0, it is recommended to do a
clean installation)
Required
Ensure that the hardware meets the minimum system requirements for VMware ESX/ESXi 4 (see vCenter Server Hardware Requirements in ESX and vCenter
Server Installation which can be sourced at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html))
Required
Ensure that there is either a local VMFS volume with at least 8 GB (10 GB recommended) free space, or a shared VMFS volume with at least 8 GB free space (10 GB recommended) per ESX COS to store the ESX 4 COS vmdk
Recommended
Ensure that there is adequate capacity in the cluster to evacuate all the workloads from the ESX/ESXi host being installed or upgraded
Recommended
Ensure that you have backed up your ESX host (service console files, .vmx files, custom scripts, host configuration files, local VMFS file system)
Recommended
Ensure that you have backed up your ESXi host (using VI CLI and vicfg-cfgbackup command)
Recommended
If applicable, check with vendor for updated and supported 3rd party agents/software
2.5 Virtual Machines
Required
Ensure that there are no suspend files for a virtual machine in order to do the VM hardware upgrade
Optional
Ensure that it is ok to upgrade the virtual machine hardware from v4 to v7. Once upgraded, you cannot revert back to an earlier virtual machine format unless you have created a snapshot of the virtual machine prior to the changes
Recommended
Ensure that the virtual machines used for the upgrade are backed up (example: you can use a backup agent / VMware Consolidated Backup or cloning to another datastore)
2.6 Licensing
Required
Ensure that you have the necessary licenses for the required features of VMware vSphere. The evaluation license is valid for 60 days after you power on the ESX/ESXi host
Recommended Ensure that you have the necessary VMware store account information
in order to access and manage the licenses
Recommended Ensure that you have a backup copy of the existing VMware License Server license files
3. New VMware vSphere Features Pre-requisites
This checklist will detail pre-requisites identified either as Required or Optional that should be
reviewed and completed after you have completed your migration from VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere and you are now ready to evaluate and implement some of the new features
and functionality that are now part of VMware vSphere.
3.1 Storage VMotion
Required
Ensure that virtual machines do not have snapshots (VMs with snapshots cannot be migrated using Storage VMotion)
Required Ensure that virtual machine disks are either in persistent mode or are raw device maps (RDM). Non persistent disks cannot be migrated using Storage VMotion
Required
Ensure that the host on which the virtual machine is running has sufficient resources to support two instances of the virtual machine running concurrently for a brief time
Required
Ensure that the host on which the virtual machine is running has a VMware VMotion license and is correctly configured for VMotion
Required
Ensure that the host on which the virtual machine is running has access to both the source and target datastores
Required Validate that there is no requirement to run more than four simultaneous migrations using VMware VMotion or VMware Storage VMotion accessing a single datastore. If no other migrations are occurring, up to four concurrent migrations with VMware Storage
VMotion involving the datastore can occur simultaneously
3.2 Thin Provisioning
Required
Ensure that virtual machines with thin provisioned disks do not need to be protected with VMware FT (since VMware FT requires virtual machines to have thick-eager zeroed disks)
Required
If using thin provisioning for an array LUN, consult with the array vendor on compatibility with VMware vSphere, performance, reporting, and alerting capabilities
Optional
Ensure that you understand the time involved for procuring, adding, and configuring additional storage, so that the appropriate alarms can be set in order to send alerts well in advance of running out of physical storage
3.3 VMware HA Improvements
Required
Ensure that all virtual machines and configuration files reside on shared storage
Required
Ensure that all hosts in a HA cluster are configured to have access to the same virtual machine network and network label names are valid and consistent
Required Ensure that DNS is configured (forward, reverse, short name, and long name / FQDN)
Required
If VM Monitoring is to be used to restart VMs when the VM heartbeat is lost, ensure that the virtual machines have the latest version of VMware Tools installed in order to communicate heartbeats
Required
If physical switches support PortFast (or equivalent), enable it on the physical network switches that connect to the hosts
Required Ensure that the network isolation addresses respond to ICMP ping requests
Optional
Ensure that all hosts in a HA cluster are configured with static IP address (VMware recommendation)
Optional Ensure that there is a redundant Service Console and VMkernel networking (VMware recommendation)
Optional Use a team of two NICs connected to separate physical switches to improve reliability of VMkernel network (VMware recommendation)
Optional Add a second network isolation address (in addition to the default gateway) for each network (VMware recommendation to set das.isolationaddress2 to second isolation address and
das.failuredetectiontime to value more than 20000 – default is 15000)
3.4 Fault Tolerance
Required
ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that the processors are supported: AMD Barcelona+, Intel Penryn+ (run the CPU compatibility tool to determine compatibility)
Required
ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that HV (Hardware Virtualization) is enabled in the BIOS
Optional
ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that power management (also known as power-capping) is turned OFF in the BIOS (performance implications)
Optional
ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that hyper-threading is turned OFF in the BIOS (performance implications)
Required
Storage: Ensure that FT protected virtual machines are on shared storage (FC, iSCSI or NFS). When using NFS, increase timeouts and have a dedicated NIC for NFS traffic
Required
Storage: Ensure that the datastore is not using physical RDM (Raw Disk Mapping). Virtual RDM is supported
Required
Storage: Ensure that there is no requirement to use Storage VMotion for VMware FT VMs since Storage VMotion is not supported for VMware FT VMs
Required
Storage: Ensure that NPIV (N-Port ID Virtualization) is not used since NPIV is not supported with VMware FT
Optional
Storage: Ensure that virtual disks on VMFS3 are thick-eager zeroed (thin or sparsely allocated will be converted to thick-eager zeroed when VMware FT is enabled requiring additional storage space)
Optional
Storage: Ensure that ISOs used by the VMware FT protected VMs are on shared storage accessible to both primary and secondary VMs (else errors reported on secondary as if there is no media, which might be acceptable)
Optional
Network: Ensure that at least two NICs are used (NIC teaming) for ESX management/VMotion and VMware FT logging. VMware recommends four VMkernel NICs: two dedicated for VMware VMotion and two dedicated for VMware FT.
Required
Network: Ensure that at least gigabit NICs are used (10 Gbit NICs can be used as well as jumbo frames enabled for better performance)
Optional
Redundancy: Ensure that the environment does not have a single point of failure (i.e. use NIC teaming, multiple network switches, and storage multipathing)
Required
vCenter Server: Ensure that the primary and secondary ESX hosts and virtual machines are in an HA-enabled cluster
Required
vCenter Server: Ensure that there is no requirement to use DRS for VMware FT protected virtual machines; in this release VMware FT cannot be used with VMware DRS (although manual VMotion is allowed)
Required
vCenter Server: Ensure that host certificate checking is enabled (enabled by default) before you add the ESX/ESXi host to vCenter Server
Required
ESX/ESXi: Ensure that the primary and secondary ESX/ESXi hosts are running the same build of VMware ESX/ESXi
Required
Virtual Machines: Ensure that the virtual machines are NOT using more than 1 vCPU (SMP is not supported)
Required
Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to use NPT/EPT (Nested Page Tables/Extended Page Tables) since VMware FT disables NPT/EPT on the ESX host
Required
Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to hot add or remove devices since hot plugging devices cannot be done with VMware FT
Required
Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to use USB (USB must be disabled) and sound devices (must not be configured) since these are not supported for Record/Replay (and VMware FT)
Required
Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to have virtual machine snapshots since these are not supported for VMware FT. Delete snapshots from existing virtual machines before protecting with VMware FT
Required Virtual Machines: Ensure that virtual machine hardware is upgraded to v7
Optional
Virtual Machines: Ensure that there are will be no more than four (to eight) VMware FT enabled virtual machine primaries or secondaries on any single ESX/ESXi host (suggested general guideline based on ESX/ESXi host and VM size and workloads which can vary)
Required
Guest OS: Ensure that the virtual machines do not use a paravirtualized guest OS
Required
3rd Party: Ensure MSCS clustered virtual machines will have MSCS clustering removed prior to protecting with VMware FT (and make sure that the virtual machines are not SMP)
3.5 Host Profiles
Required
Identify one host that will be used to create a baseline host profile
Required
Ensure that there is at least one additional host of similar hardware, make, model, and configuration that can be used to apply a host profile
Required
Ensure that there is adequate capacity to evacuate the workloads running on the additional host when put in maintenance mode to apply the host profile
Required
Identify one host that will be used to create a baseline host profile
Required
Ensure that there is at least one additional host of similar hardware, make, model, and configuration that can be used to apply a host profile
Required
Ensure that there is adequate capacity to evacuate the workloads running on the additional host when put in maintenance mode to apply the host profile
3.6 vNetwork Distributed Switch
Required
If vDS is being implemented in order to support PVLANs, ensure that the physical switch is PVLAN aware and is configured appropriately
Required
Ensure that no more than 16 vNetwork Distributed Switches are required per vCenter Server (max is 16 per vCenter Server)
Optional
Ensure existing standard vSwitches have multiple physical NICs (NIC teaming) in order to have zero downtime to migrate ESX/ESXi hosts from standard vswitches to vDS.
3.7 Distributed Power Management
Required
Ensure that there are at least two ESX/ESXi hosts are in a vCenter Server cluster
Required
Ensure that VMotion is set up and working correctly. The VMotion network should be a single IP subnet, not multiple subnets separated by routers
Required
If using WOL (Wake on LAN), ensure that the VMotion NIC on each ESX/ESXi host supports WOL
Required
If using WOL, ensure that the switch port that each WOL supporting VMotion NIC is set to auto-negotiate and NOT set to a fixed speed (because many NICs support WOL only if they can switch to 100Mbps or less when the host is powered off)
Required
If using BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) or IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), ensure that BMC or IPMI settings are configured for each host. The steps will vary according to manufacturer and model
Required
If using BMC, ensure that BMC LAN channel is configured to be “always available” and to allow “operator” privileged commands
Required
If using BMC, ensure you have the user name and password for the BMC account, IP address and MAC address of the NIC associated with the BMC. The BMC may have a dedicated NIC or it may work in-line with one of the system’s onboard adapters
Required
If required, ensure that the IP address of the NIC associated with the BMC has a static IP address (or a DHCP address with an infinite lease)
Required
Ensure you test each ESX/ESXi host that is using a BMC or WOL before configuring VMware DPM for the cluster (hosts that fail a BMC or WOL test should be disabled from using power management)
3.8 vCLI and vMA
Required
If using vSphere CLI (Command Line Interface) 4.0, ensure that the target environment is ESX/ESXi 3.5U2 and later with vCenter 2.5U2 and later
Required
If using vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) 4.0, ensure that the target environment is ESX/ESXi 3.5U2 and later with vCenter 4.0 and
later