Upgrading ESXI version on ADDC

[Ratatapa]

Ok this is something I never did and i'm kinda scared to do, I tried to do some research but I can't find exactly what I need so I guess i'll rely on BG again.

We want to transfer all our VM on a NAS, so we can balance to load between 2 hosts.

Atm 1 host is ESXI 6.0 and the other is ESXI 5.5

All the VMs resides on the ESXI 5.5 host, and when they will all be migraded on the NAS, we plan to format the 5.5 and install 6.0 on it, and both hosts will be managed by VCenter 6.0.

Now the AD VM which is a Windows 2012 R2, is currently installed on ESXI 5.5 host, and need to be migrated on the NAS, the migration will be simple, just power down the AD then Copy from 1 datastore to the other and tell VMware that I moved the VM so it doesn't change the MAC of the VMnic.

What worries me now is the Virtual Machine hardware version and VMware tools.

If I transfert my ADVM on the NAS, and then add the VM to the ESXI 6.0 inventory, and then update VMware tools and the Virtual machine hardware (in the VM settings), will i fuck up my AD? or should I simply not update VMware tools?

The company has 2 AD, but in 2 different Office by VPN, and the AD we need to migrate is the primary one, aka has all the roles.

This is something that stress me and I wanna know if doing it will be ok or not

Thanks again

[xerodok]

You can move the datastores / VHDs anywhere. All you have to do is reroute them within vSphere. Migrate your data to the NAS -> run upgrades -> import VMs.

[Ratatapa]

That's not my question

My question is can i update VMware tools on AD without it fucking up

[xerodok]

That's not my question

My question is can i update VMware tools on AD without it fucking up

You can do everything through vCenter without messing anything up.

[Ratatapa]

I can't put them onvcenter yet because we have free ESXI licence, waiting for VMware to ship us our licence,

So we would have to update vmware tools from ESXI 6.0.0 directly

Edit : But I guess we could keep it on old tools, until Vcenter is ready

[Yabby]

I would suggest to keep the old tools until vcenter is ready (i've never dealt with the free esxi licence). I will say to make sure you do it during downtime, as upgrading the tools will sometimes uninstall your NIC drivers and reinstall it with a new version. I learned this the hard way upgrading VMware tools on our main file server about a year ago. For almost 2 mins, people thought the world was coming to an end.