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Introduction
5 Upgrading to Dell EMC vSphere and vSAN version 7.0 | Technical white paper | 395
1 Introduction
This document elaborates the guidelines for the users who plan to upgrade from earlier versions of vSphere
and vSAN to 7.0 for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers. The objective of this document is to take you through the
prerequisites, steps to be executed prior invoking upgrade 7.0. The intent of this document is to avoid the
obvious problems of an upgrade procedure by improving user awareness of known issues and facilitating
better planning by VMware administrators.
1.1 Audience and scope
The intended audience for this white paper includes IT administrators and channel partners who intend to
upgrade their VMware infrastructure to version 7.0-based releases. This paper helps the users or
administrators to understand the general guidelines and definite prerequisites prior upgrading to 7.0.
1.2 Hardware requirements
Dell EMC supports all yx4x and yx5x servers for vSphere version 7.0 as well as support selected server
models from the yx3x series PowerEdge servers.
The following lists the reference documents:
• See VMware vSphere 7.x on Dell EMC PowerEdge Compatibility Matrix and VMware Compatibility
Guide links to know the supported Dell EMC PowerEdge platforms list for ESXi 7.0.
• Dell EMC does not support Broadcom 5719 and 5720 family of adapters for vSphere 7.0. For more
information, see Dell EMC VMware vSphere 7.0 release notes.
• Dell EMC does not support NVMe hot unplug, or “Surprise removal”, for vSphere and vSAN 7.0 at
present. For more information, see Dell EMC VMware vSphere 7.0 release notes.
• For information on generic hardware requirements, see the VMware ESXi Upgrade guide.
• To check the System storage requirements and supported boot media for ESXi 7.0, see VMware
vSphere 7.x on Dell EMC PowerEdge Compatibility Matrix.
1.3 Software requirements
The following software is required before you can begin your upgrade to vSphere and vSAN version 7.0:
• VMware native image of version 7.0 or a Dell EMC customized ESXi version 7.0 image. Find these at
VMware download and Dell EMC support.
• vSphere Life Cycle Manager, if you use this utility to upgrade your servers.
• Offline depot files for upgrading existing 6.5.x or 6.7.x servers to 7.0.
Note: The latest ESXi 7.0 images will be available at VMware download. The earlier versions of the ESXi
images will be available at Dell EMC support.
For additional reference documents, see the following:
• The blog on Dell customization of VMware ESXi and its advantages.
• If you use VMware vanilla 7.0 image, you can convert that into a Dell EMC customized image by
installing Dell EMC add-on. See the VMware documentation to understand an add-on and Dell EMC
add-on details.