VMware replicas between different ESXi version

[mporliod]

I have a host running VMware ESXi 6.7 and another with version 8.x. The production host is the one with the older version, and I need to replicate to the host with the more recent version. Could you confirm if it's necessary to upgrade the production host to version 8.x to enable replication? It is generally not recommended to operate with different versions


thank !

[Mildur]

Hello Massimiliano

Replication target has only one requirement.

The target host must support the hardware version of the replicated VM. Therefore I don't expect any issues from ESXI 6.7 to ESXI 8. ESXi 8 supports all HW versions from earlier ESXI builds.
But the other way around may not work. ESXi 6.7 will not be able to run VMs created with hardware version 20 (default HW version of v8 GA).

You can check the hardware version compatibility matrix here.

BEst,
Fabian

[_james]

Hello, I apologize to bringing up and old post, but my question is the same, but with different versions.
Will I be able to replicate from vCenter 7/ESXi 7 to vCenter9/ESXi 9 environment? We are exploring different options on how to move old out-of-support infrastructure to the new one and replication seems a very viable option (could do backup/restore, but the restore times would be too large). Our Veeam version 12.3.2.

[Mildur]

Hi James,

Old-to-new is generally not an issue. The target hypervisor must support the "virtual machine hardware version" of your replicated VM.
VMs created on vSphere 7 have the version 17 to 19 (depending on the update level). vSphere 9 supports hardware version 4 to 22.

Best regards,
Fabian