Over the past year I have written several blog posts and conducted workshops on vSphere 6.5 upgrades. The intent was to help customers learn about the upgrade concepts and planning. Only by getting familiar with the concepts and planning accordingly will the execution be successful. Part of the upgrade journey is knowing what resources are available, where to find them, and how to use them . It gives me great pleasure to announce “The Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5″ eBook. This is a new and free resource to help guide VMware customers with all stages of the vSphere 6.5 upgrade process. Let’s take a look on what’s included inside this new resource and help you impress your management and colleagues with your vSphere upgrade knowledge.
The eBook first helps get VMware customers get acquainted with what’s new in vSphere 6.5. By getting familiar with the features and functionality in vSphere 6.5, a business case can presented to an organization’s stakeholders on the benefits of upgrading their current vSphere 5.5 or 6.0 environment. This is especially important for customer’s on vSphere 5.5, which is approaching end of support on September 19th, 2018. After learning about the what’s new of vSphere 6.5 it’s time to start looking at the upgrade process and creating an upgrade runbook. The eBook breaks this down into three phases:
- Phase 1: Pre-upgrade – the upfront work which should be done or considered prior to starting an upgrade
- Phase 2: Upgrade – mapping the steps of the upgrade process and execution
- Phase 3: Post-Upgrade – validating with business owners everything went according to plan
Within each phase are details and considerations, but also links to resources to help. There are also two example upgrade scenarios:
- vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5
- vSphere 6.0 to vSphere 6.5 Update 1
Each scenario also includes a set of requirements and decisions used to determine the upgrade path. These examples may or may not relate to your current environment. The intent is to help familiarize customers with the upgrade process and concepts which they can apply to their specific situation. The eBook also contains a reference section loaded with important links to documents, knowledge base articles, tools, guides, etc. I hope you enjoy this new resource and may your upgrade planning and execution be successful.