vSphere 5.5 Upgrade Part 2 – Understanding the Hardware and software requirements for vSphere 5.5

It is very important to understand the Hardware and software requirement before going further with the system or software upgrade. This post will helps you to understand the Hardware and software pre-requisites for vSphere 5.5. In this post i have covered , All the requirements including Hardware requirement, Database interoperability matrixes and how to verify the Hardware compatibility guide to understand that your existing server hardware to capable to run vSphere 5.5.

Below table contains the Minimum hardware requirements for Simple Install or Upgrade options.Simple Install option allows you to Install or Upgrade vCenter Server  including other components like vCenter Single Sign-on, vSphere Web Client and Inventory Service on a Single host machine

Minimum Hardware Requirement for Simple Install
Processor
Intel or AMD processor with two or more
logical cores each with a speed of 2 GHZ
Memory
12 GB
Disk Storage
40- 60 GB of free disk space
Network Speed
1 GBPS

Below table contains the Minimum hardware requirements for  various vSphere  components when using Custom Install or Upgrade options. Custom Install Option can be used to Upgrade vCenter and other components separately to customize the location and configuration of each components.

Minimum Required
of vSphere Component
Processor
Memory
Disk Storage
Network
Speed
vCenter Single Sign-on
Intel or AMD processor with two or more logical cores each with a speed of 2 GHZ
3 GB
2 GB
1 GBps
vCenter Inventory Service
Intel or AMD processor with two or more logical cores each with a speed of 2 GHZ
3 GB
Small inventor:
low activity rate: 5GB
high activity rate: 15GB
Large inventory:
low activity rate: 15GB
high activity rate: 40-60GB
1 GBps
vSphere Web Client
2.00 GHz processor with 4 cores
At least 2GB
2 GB
1 GBps
vCenter Server upto 50 Hosts and
 50 Powered-on VM’s
2 Cores CPU (64-Bit CPU)
2.0GHz or faster Intel 64 or AMD 64 processor.
4 GB
5 GB
1 GBps
vCenter Server upto 300 Hosts and
 3000 Powered-on VM’s
4 Cores CPU (64-Bit CPU)
2.0GHz or faster Intel 64 or AMD 64 processor.
8 GB
10 GB
1 GBps
vCenter Server upto 1000 Hosts and
 10,000 Powered-on VM’s
8 Cores CPU (64-Bit CPU)
2.0GHz or faster Intel 64 or AMD 64 processor.
16 GB
10 GB
1 GBps

Verify the Database Requirement for the vCenter Database
You can verify whether your existing vCenter database is compatible with vSphere 5.5 or not using the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes.

1.Select the Radio button “Solution/Database Interoperability”

2. Under Select a VMware Product, Select VMware vCenter Server and Select the Version from the drop-down.

3. Select the Database version of your existing vCenter server and click on Add

4. If your Selected Database version is marked with Green tick Mark, Then your database version will be supported for vCenter 5.5 installation or Upgrade.

Verifying the Upgrade path for your vCenter Upgrade

1.Select the Radio button “Solution Upgrade Path”

2. Select VMware vCenter Server from the Select a product drop-down

3. You can verify that your existing vCenter version is supported to upgrade to vCenter 5.5 or not. and If you Hover over the Green tick mark. You will get a note about the upgrade methods.

Verifying your Hardware Compatibility

You can verify your Hardware Model is supported to install or upgrade to ESXi version 5.5 using VMware Compatibility Guide
1. Select a Product version, Partner Name and System Type as per your choice

2. You can even select the  vSphere Features which you like to verify whether it is supported in that hardware or not. Optionally you can even select the additional criteria like Sockets, Memory etc

3. Click on Update and View Results 

4. You will get the results with partner name  and Server Model which suits your above search along with the  release of vSphere which is supported on that hardware.
I hope  this is informative for you to understand the pre-requistires for Upgrading to vSphere 5.5 Thansk for Reading !!!!

vSphere 5.5 Upgrade Series