VMware version compatibility and AIQ Upgrade

[ABuk]

We are in the process of planning upgrades to vSphere 7.0u2 and we are trying to seek guidance on OCUM version compatibility at a VM level.

The ITM shows the OVA deployment level and the Host level compatibility but does the version of VMware matter if the VMs are already deployed?

The OCUM instances are only connected to the Netapp and do not interact with the vCenter other than a running VM on that platform.

Does the version compatibility matter at this point from a support perspective or should we plan on getting the OCUM instances updated to 9.9 support 7.0u2 before we do any VMware upgrades?

Any help would be appreciated.

[helge]

Usually the VM itself has a version/compatibility mode as a feature when creating the VM.

E.g. 6.0 and higher, 6.5 and higher. Usually higher versions will run older VMs without issues.

There might be problems with ancient ones, this should be known to VMware support.

So far as I can see there is no way to limit a VM compatibility to a strict version. When you set the compatibility mode it always says "and later" for the compatible ESXi version.

In summary- from VMware perspective there is no problem.

From NetApp perspective there is the IMT (compatibility matrix) which lists compatible ESX hosts. NetApp does not guarantee functionality outside of it.