Assuming that VMs are powered on and reside on a datastore within a datastore cluster, can you remove the datastore from said cluster?
Okay, so not problem.
As long as you don't unmount the Datastores from the ESXi hosts there will be no problem.
Just move outside the Datastore from the Datastore cluster and it will be fine.
Then, you can remove your hosts from one vCenter and add it to the new vCenter (if networking is the same there should be no problem).
By removing you mean only from the Datastore Cluster or Unmounting the Datastore?
The end goal is to move the hosts i have from one vcenter instance to another and there are datastore clusters in place.
By removing i meant only from the datastore cluster.
Have checked this link VMware Knowledge Base ?
Okay, so not problem.
As long as you don't unmount the Datastores from the ESXi hosts there will be no problem.
Just move outside the Datastore from the Datastore cluster and it will be fine.
Then, you can remove your hosts from one vCenter and add it to the new vCenter (if networking is the same there should be no problem).