ESXI 6.0 Server - Hardware Upgrades

[Sevilla]

I have an HP Z800 server running dual Xeon E5620 @ 2.4GHz CPUs. I currently have it setup running 4 different VMs configured as follows:

 

VM 1 - FreeNAS: 16TB of storage using an IBM M1015 flashed to LSI 9211-8i in IT Mode via PCI-passthrough connected to 4 x 4TB Seagate NAS drives in Raid-Z.

VM 2 - Windows 7 64bit Pro: Running various applications such as Hamachi, Plex, CrashPlan, and FileZilla.

VM 3 - OpenVPN

VM 4 - Ubuntu 14.04: Running OwnCloud, also meant for future testing of Linux apps.

 

The HP Z800 itself has a 250GB SSD and 1TB HDD datastore drives, and 48GB of DDR3 ECC RAM.

 

I intend to upgrade the hardware on this server, specifically the CPUs. I will be upgrading them probably within the next 6 months to dual X5650 Xeon CPUs to gain an extra 4 physical cores/8 threads mostly to add a few more VMs and/or rebuild/beef-up current VMs for future projects.

 

My question is as follows: If I physically upgrade the CPU on the HP Z800, what will happen to my current setup/configuration? Would I break my VMs? Will the ESXI 6.0 server software not work? Would I need to start from scratch? Right now a pair of X5650s on eBay are roughly 160ish give or take a few dollars. I intend to get them when they drop a bit more to a more comfortable 100 or less. I am just very afraid to do the upgrade and watch my entire setup die, along with the many hours of configurations I've spent already.

 

Any info/feedback is welcome.

[kichilron]

One important thing to keep in mind:

 

VMware licenses per CPU-socket - I don't know how exactly you got your license, but you're most likely going to run into issues when adding an extra CPU.

 

Also: your VM's don't care about the hardware (which is the whole point about virtualization, really), which in turn means for as long as you don't change the instruction set (which you don't do by adding an extra CPU to the system) you're going to be fine as far as the VM's go.

[Sevilla]

17 minutes ago, kichilron said:

VMware licenses per CPU-socket - I don't know how exactly you got your license, but you're most likely going to run into issues when adding an extra CPU.

ESXI 6.0 was a free license, and as far as I've read, the only limitation is using 2 physical CPU cores, which is essentially what I'd be using.

[kichilron]

Just now, Sevilla said:

ESXI 6.0 was a free license, and as far as I've read, the only limitation is using 2 physical CPU cores, which is essentially what I'd be using.

 

How do you actually manage your VM's?

[Sevilla]

1 minute ago, kichilron said:

 

How do you actually manage your VM's?

As in what do I use to manage them and configure them? I use the vSphere Client.

[kichilron]

26 minutes ago, Sevilla said:

As in what do I use to manage them and configure them? I use the vSphere Client.

 

You're most likely using the legacy version of the vSphere client, then. Which is free, if I remember correctly.

 

However, I do not know much about the free licensing of ESXi Servers, but if you say 2 CPU Sockets are included within the free license then you should be good.

 

At any rate, however: your VM's will still work fine, as that's the entire purpose of VM's in the first place.

[Sevilla]

1 minute ago, kichilron said:

 

You're most likely using the legacy version of the vSphere client, then. Which is free, if I remember correctly.

 

However, I do not know much about the free licensing of ESXi Servers, but if you say 2 CPU Sockets are included within the free license then you should be good.

 

At any rate, however: your VM's will still work fine, as that's the entire purpose of VM's in the first place.

A friend of mine advised me the same thing, so long as I was not changing the physical number of CPU cores I should be ok.

 

I was mostly worried about something happening or some sort of configuration failing due to the change. Regardless, this is good info, I guess I won't truly know what will happen until many months down the line.

[kichilron]

Just now, Sevilla said:

A friend of mine advised me the same thing, so long as I was not changing the physical number of CPU cores I should be ok.

 

I was mostly worried about something happening or some sort of configuration failing due to the change. Regardless, this is good info, I guess I won't truly know what will happen until many months down the line.

 

You can always try to make a backup of the .vmdk Files, which represent your virtual Hard Drive for the VM's in question.

 

You can also increase the CPU Core count at any time, sometimes (if configured properly) while the VM's are running, but some OS's get mad at you when you try to lower the CPU Core count.

[Sevilla]

1 minute ago, kichilron said:

 

You can always try to make a backup of the .vmdk Files, which represent your virtual Hard Drive for the VM's in question.

 

You can also increase the CPU Core count at any time, sometimes (if configured properly) while the VM's are running, but some OS's get mad at you when you try to lower the CPU Core count.

Right, before I tried any of this I planned to make a backup of as much of everything I could to ensure if something failed, i'd have a copy of everything and I can pick up where I left off.

 

Core counts probably won't be an issue, as my VMs so far have the right amount of cores allocated to their needs, and I probably won't change them. That being said, I may only change priority of resources in their respective settings (ie. the CPU shares), but I don't believe that should affect in anything with my current systems.

 

I walked into the world of ESXI very cautiously coming from Server 2012 R2, but I did it to learn from it, and the past week of using it has been a valuable learning experience.

[kichilron]

Just now, Sevilla said:

Right, before I tried any of this I planned to make a backup of as much of everything I could to ensure if something failed, i'd have a copy of everything and I can pick up where I left off.

 

Core counts probably won't be an issue, as my VMs so far have the right amount of cores allocated to their needs, and I probably won't change them. That being said, I may only change priority of resources in their respective settings (ie. the CPU shares), but I don't believe that should affect in anything with my current systems.

 

I walked into the world of ESXI very cautiously coming from Server 2012 R2, but I did it to learn from it, and the past week of using it has been a valuable learning experience.

 

If you're planning on working in this field it's advised to get familiar with this as much as possible, as this will help you immensely, seeing as VMware has the biggest marketshare in virtualization.

 

And it's fun, too!