2012 R2 HA Cluster with SCVMM migration to 2016

Question

I have a 2012 R2 HA cluster with SCVMM 2012 R2 in production at the moment but wish to upgrade to 2016. I also have new physical servers to migrate to, I presume the following steps are correct?

1. Upgrade the operating system for the SCVMM host to 2016
2. Upgrade SCVMM to SCVMM 2016
3. Install 2016 OS on to the new hosts
4. Add those hosts into the mixed mode cluster
5. Drain existing 2012 R2 cluster nodes
6. Evict existing 2012 R2 cluster nodes

Cheers,

Answer 1

Hi @P B ,

Your scenario will work and is correct, do note that Microsoft always recommends a clean install instead of in-place upgrades whenever possible.

One thing you will need to ensure is that your SQL Server is supported on Windows Server 2016 & SCVMM 2016, see: List of supported SQL Server versions
Note: SQL Server upgrade can be performed any time, independent of VMM upgrade

You can also find upgrade information from the official Microsoft documentations over here:

Upgrade System Center Virtual Machine Manager
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/vmm/upgrade-vmm?view=sc-vmm-2016

Upgrade a standalone VMM server
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/vmm/upgrade-vmm?view=sc-vmm-2016#upgrade-a-standalone-vmm-server

Mixed mode upgrade with additional VMM servers
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/vmm/upgrade-vmm?view=sc-vmm-2016#mixed-mode-upgrade-with-additional-vmm-servers

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Best regards,
Leon

Answer 2

To successfully upgrade your SCVMM older version , you need to un-install old SCVMM from all nodes after you have added the newer nodes to the cluster before evicting the old node from the cluster.

for stand alone SCVMM , you need to un-install the nodes with retain Database option , then install newer SCVMM using the old Database.