topic Re: vSAN 2-Node Direct Connect move from one vCenter to a new vCenter in VMware vSAN Discussions

vSAN 2-Node Direct Connect move from one vCenter to a new vCenter

MJMSRI — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 11:35:49 GMT

Hi All,

We have a 2-Node Direct Connect vSAN Cluster managed by a vCenter. We have a new vCenter and want to move this cluster from the old vCenter to the new vCenter. Would this article cover the steps needed to achieve this?

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151610

The current vCenter has 2 vSAN Clusters

vSAN 7.0.2 Cluster 7-Node. This contains the vSAN Witness VM for the 2-Node Cluster below.
vSAN 7.0.2 Cluster 2-Node direct connect.

So plan is:

Follow the above KB article to move the 7-Node vSAN to the new vCenter that contains the vSAN Witness VM (This cluster uses 2 x vDS)
Then move the 2-Node vSAN to the new vCenter. (This cluster uses 2 x vDS)

Thanks,

Re: vSAN 2-Node Direct Connect move from one vCenter to a new vCenter

TheBobkin — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 17:55:29 GMT

@MJMSRI, Yes, that kb is quite comprehensive and should contain all of the relevant steps, though I still don't see anything about the cluster-level vSAN licensing being moved over (mentioned it to author a while back IIRC). You may have 'out of inventory Witness' while moving the 2-node cluster and *may* have to leave cluster manually on it before adding it back via the Fault Domain UI page.

Re: vSAN 2-Node Direct Connect move from one vCenter to a new vCenter

Tibmeister — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 21:54:32 GMT

This is a very nice article that I recently have followed. The licensing piece is definitely a miss in the article, but is part of the cluster setup in my mind.

The one thing that I did that isn't mentioned in the article, IIRC, is that I created a new witness appliance, then after I moved the hosts to the new vCenter and new Cluster, I changed the witness host to the new appliance. I don't remember having any issues, but, I would do some testing before doing this with a live production cluster, or open a proactive SR and request them to validate the steps against your environment. That's actually what I did and it was great to have the eyes on before doing anything, and having the SR already open and ready incase something went sideways.