Move Vcenter to another Host

[tippet5x]

Hello

looking for any advise on moving my vm vcenter from 5.1 host to a new 5.5 host.

do I need to power down all vm prior or should I do a migrate of the vcenter?

thank you

[admin]

If your VM is placed in a shared LUN that can be migrated to thte 55 host.

But one issue that you might face is, if you upgrade the hardware version of the vCenter VM, then to edit the settings of that VM, you would require web client.

~dGeorgey

[tippet5x]

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100462...

I don't have to follow:?

[Virtualinfra]

Is the new vsphere 5.5 is on vcenter 5.5 and do you have vcenter 5.1 on vsphere 5.1 in vcenter 5.5 and you want to move the vm with vcenter 5.1 from vsphere 5.1 to vsphere 5.5 then below are the options.

1. VMFS datastore shared between vsphere 5.1 and vsphere 5.5, both controller by vcenter 5.5, online vmotion/svmotion.

2. VMFS datastore not shared between vsphere 5.1 host and vsphere 5.5 host both controlled by vcenter 5.5, then shutdown the vcenter 5.1 vm and do a storage vmotion from vsphere 5.1 datastore to vsphere 5.5 datastore.

If the vsphere 5.5 is with vcenter 5.5 and vsphere 5.1 is on vcenter 5.1 then all together the approach is different.

Remove vsphere 5.1 host hosting vcenter 5.1 VM from vcenter 5.1 and add that host to vcenter 5.5 then use the option 2 above.

[tippet5x]

hello

I'm moving all VMs from 5.1 to a new 5.5 environment with a new backend storage

most of the servers have been migrated except for the vcenter, using the migrate option.

vcenter is 5.5.0

[Virtualinfra]

Option 1: For a period of time request storage admin to present the vmfs volume that has vcenter 5.5 to both vsphere 5.1 and vsphere 5.5 host. move the vcenter to vsphere 5.5 host and do a storage vmotion to new back end storage. then ask the storage team to unpresent the datastore from vsphere 5.5 this way you can do it without downtime to vcenter.

Option 2:

Clone the vcenter from vsphere 5.1 old datastore to vsphere 5.5 new datastore(it will take time depending on the size of vcenter), shutdown the vcenter on vsphere 5.1 and poweron the vcenter in 5.5, you should be good.

[tippet5x]

sounds great.thanks

option 2 with cloning no vmotion setup yet.

just curious would the migrate option work too?

thanks

[ClintColding]

You won't be able to migrate until vMotion is setup.

[Virtualinfra · Accepted solution]

another options use vmware convertor and do a v2v for vm on vsphere 5.1 in old storage to vsphere 5.5 in new storage.

shutdown vc on vsphere 5.1 and power on vc on vsphere 5.5.