Consolidating VCenter Server Appliance into singe Active/Passive VCSA v6.5 ?

[AlbertWT]

Hi All,

I’d like to consolidate the VCenter server in my two different Data Center locations into just one as Active / Passive VCSA to reduce the operational maintenance cost.

Data Center 1

Vcenter server: VMware VCSA v6.5b

18 ESXi 6.0 servers - 167 VMs

normal vSwitches no dvSwitch

Data Center 2

Vcenter server: Physical Windows Server 2008 R2 & SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition.

22 ESXi 5.5 servers - 200+ VMs

• dvSwitch-PROD-NET [Production Corp network]
• dvSwitch-VOIP-NET [Production Voice network]
• dvSwitch-DMZ-NET [Production DMZ network]
• dvSwitch-Test-NET [Testing Corp network]

Would I be able to consolidate the two VCenter servers above into single Active/Passive VCSA v6.5 VM in Data Center 1 ?

My Current link speed between the data center is around 50-60 ms when ping-ing each other.

Any kind of help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

[Finikiez]

Hello!

It's not clear what do you mean by "single Active/Passive VCSA"?

Do you whant to manager all resources with one vcenter and make it high available?

[AlbertWT]

Yes, that's correct.

is that possible?

[senthilkumarms8]

Hi,

There are multiple things we need to consider in your scenario.

1. you want to have a single vCenter instance, then the site B vCenter will not be used anymore.

2. you can not convert the site B 5.5 vCenter as a Sita-A's passive vCenter. Since the inventory DB all these are different

3. The only option is to delete the Site B vCenter and add all the host to Site A vCenter

4. Before deleting Site B vCenter you have to migrate all the hosts and VMs to a standard switch.

5. Make sure you SiteB ESXi hosts are not having any NAT to reach site A network.

Hope the above points will give some thoughts.

[AlbertWT]

senthilkumar does this means, I can still do the cutover with no outage or impact when I change the production VM from dvSwitch into normal vSwitch ?

[senthilkumarms8]

Minimal downtime is expected for the VMs when you flip the port group from VDS a to standard switch. also check the feasiblity for other integrated products with vCenter like SRM, vRA, vROPs, NSX, backup etc..

[AlbertWT]

senthilkumar, No, there is no other product like SRM, vRA, etc... The backup software already supports Vcenter 6.5

[senthilkumarms8]

Agreed, if your backup software is integrated with site-B vCenter. then you have to reconfigure the backup software with site-A vCenter after the consolidation