vCenter 6.x on Win migration to VCSA 6.5 on a different AD domain

[vmrulz]

Greetings,

I'm planning a migration to 6.5. All servers are VM's.

Current state

vCenter 6.0.x on Windows 2012 with embedded PSC and external SQL database

VUM on separate Windows 2012 server

Both in an isolated small MS Active Directory domain we plan to retire

Future state

2 qty External PSC's (PhotonOS) fronted by F5 VIP

2 qty vCenter/VUM HA pair (PhotonOS)

Join existing MS AD domain (that all our servers are in)

I know you can migrate a Windows vCenter 6.x to a VCSA 6.5 with the migration assistant. I concerned about needing to change the AD domain as part of the migration.

Anybody have any experience with this?

Regards

Ron

[daphnissov]

As long as the hostname does not change, it being a different AD domain shouldn't be an issue. I'd recommend doing the upgrade to vCSA on the current one, repoint to an external PSC, deploy second PSC and begin replication, then you can introduce the load balancer. For the AD domain, this should just affect authentication. Remove the old identity source, disjoin from domain, join to new one, and add new auth source as IWA.

[vmrulz]

Thanks for the fast reply. That is helpful information. This is not something we do every day and something we don't want to fall on its face.