I don't have a quick means to test this in a lab and don't want to mess with production without at least someone else confirming my suspicion.
I have a vCenter 5.1 VM (and accompanying SQL VM) running on an esxi 5.1 host currently. I also have new 6.5 hosts and 6.5 vCenter in the environment.
I'd like to migrate all of the VMs off the esxi 5.1 host but I have remote branch office hosts dependent on the vCenter 5.1 running on that host still. I need the vCenter 5.1 to continue until we can get the remote branch hosts upgraded to 6.5.
Can I migrate the vCenter 5.1 VM (and accompanying SQL VM) to one of the new 6.5 hosts (shutdown VM, remove from inventory, add to inventory on new 6.5 host)? I know I can't vmotion.
My assumption is that the 6.5 host will treat the vcenter 5.1 VM as any other Windows VM without caring/knowing what is running on the OS. I won't upgrade the VMtools on the VM.