Will this work for no downtime upgrade from DSS v6 to DSS v7 with iSCSI Failover?

[mjp]

When upgrading from V6 to V7 there is a new version of how the Failover works and the Volume Replication so there will be down time needed to perform the upgrade as you wont be able to keep your existing Failover and volume replication settings and you will need to stop all the tasks and delete them and recreate them.

Thanks, Todd - I think I was accounting for that by doing the direct IP connection? I'm just not sure if I can setup the iSCSI volume on the v7 unit with all failover settings in place and still work on it before the second unit is running.

Step 2 should be more like "_RE_configure the hosts so that they're connecting directly to the secondary unit's iSCSI Target IP, not the virtual IP" - this way, I'm bypassing any of the failover configured settings? Then if I stop failover, the iSCSI Target should still respond? At that point, the primary v6 can be wiped, drives replaced, and then v7 installed, setup with all the v7 settings and configure it for failover (though I won't be able to start it)... Then map that new v7 to the hosts, vmotion everything from the v6 box to the v7, and then repeat the same for the now empty v6 box?

[mjp]

I guess I should be clear - this will not really be an "upgrade" in the sense that I'm upgrading the version.. We'll be pulling the drives out since they're all spindles, and getting replaced with SSDs, so, I'll be doing a fresh v7 install on them.

[To-M]

Yes you can connect to the IP Address of the NICs to the Targets just make sure that you are connecting to the Source volume of the replicated iSCSI volume, if you feel that you would like more clarification please feel free to call us.

[mjp]

Sounds good, I'll call tomorrow to make sure this will work... Would love not to have to do more vMotions than necessary.