ESXi 4 - Changing IP and Hostname

[pegasus00720111]

Are there any known issues or additional steps needed beyond going into the ESXi configuration console to change the Hostname and IP of an existing ESXi 4 server (4.0 U2) and importing into vCenter if physically moving the server from one envirment to another (i.e. a blade server from a Test vsphere 4 environment to another enclosure for Prod vSphere 4)?  Or are there additional steps necessary?

Also, would there be any issues within ESXi if just swapping the hard drives if the servers are the same model (i.e. HP dl480 G6 blades)

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

It's a pretty straight forward process to change the hostname or IP address - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006710.  If the host is currently joined to vCenter you might want to remove it first.  Then you'll just join the host to your production vCenter after your changes in the same way you would join a new host.  You might want to check the hosts file on ESXi to ensure that the hostname is updated correctly and to see if any custom entries has been added.

You can swap disks, but you may need to correct NIC asignments after and you'll have to check things if you're using remote storage.  ESXi also uses the MAC address of  vmnic0 for the MAC of the management port so you'll want to update that to avoid the potential of duplicate MAC addresses should you end up with both hosts on the same subnet.

[pegasus00720111]

Thanks.  I figured it was straight forward for the IP and hostname change with ESXi, just wanted to verify I wasn't missing anything.  Swapping hard drives could be a quick recovery option with our blades in case of hardware failure, so I appreciate the iinformation there as well

[Dave_Mishchenko]

One other thing to consider is have you generated a custom SSL cert for the host?  

[pegasus00720111]

No, we haven't generated a custom cert for the host