PersonalExperience: Updating the Hardware of a ESXI host (CPU, Mainboard, RAM)

[Anon]

Hello everyone,

 

I just wanted to share my story on how I went about upgrading my old Server to new hardware.

I was and still am on a ESXI 6.7.0

Old System: 32GB DDR3 RAM, AMD FX8350, 7 Internal HDDs and 4 external USB disk drives and 2 USB sticks (For booting Unraid)

New System: 32GB DDR4 RAM, Ryzen 9 3900X, 7 Internal HDDs and 4 external USB disk drives and 2 USB sticks (For booting Unraid). Mainboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS AMD X570

 

1. I backuped my configuration of the Unraid and took screenshot of some settings in case I had to start from new.
2. I put the server in maintance mode. Shut it down. Removed the mainboard
3. I inserted the new mainboard along with some RAM in the slot s advised by the user manual for one RAM stick usage.
4. I added a cheap temporary GPU to get some visual on what was happening
5. I booted up and went into the BIOS. Saw everything seemed to get detected without problem. Saw the BIOS version was a bit older though so got the newest version. saved the content of the zip on a USB stick and flashed the BIOS
6. booted back into the BIOS to see if the new version was working fine. All was being detected as hoped
7. Exited BIOS and let ESXI boot up. I was suprised but it worked just fine. I could access the web UI and saw all my VMs.
8. Next I wanted to try to add 2x 16GB RAM modules form my main PC as that has 64 Gig and my server could use it more. Added those in the B channel and they got accepted immediately. Vmware loaded up and showed the full RAM
9. Removed the Graphics card and booted server again. -> No result. After some searching I found out that you had to set the VGA Card Detection from "Auto" to "Ignore". After setting that the server booted without a GPU
10. Started a small VM -> It complained it didn't have AMD-V. That was my fault and had to go back into the BIOS and searach around a bit untill I could activate SVM in the CPU Overclocking settings. After I booted back up the VM started just fine
11. Next I tried my Unraid Vm. It had lost all its USB Drive associations but had kept its interal HDDs. I added the USB ones back and booted. And suprisingly enough it got all the drives automatically and was able to start the array without anything needed on my side.

 

TLDR: Updating the Hardware from a ESXI Host can in some situtions be as easy as changing hardware and booting again. And that it also pretty much has no consequences for the Unraid VM

 

I really thought the whole process would have me face a lot more challenges and maybe having to reinstall ESXI or having to manually resort the drives or the like. But it seems like it just basically worked out of the box (Except for those 2 BIOS settings). Even just adding in RAM of a different size worked perfectly.

 

I made this post mainly because I had expected a lot more troubles and had searched the internet on similar situations but couldn't easily find many experiences on upgrading the hardware of an ESXI Host and even less that had Unraid on it.