service console issue

[gaganvmware]

I have a 2 ESX and 1 ESXi 4.1 hosts in the cluster . over 50 VM'S are running on two ESX hosts ( esx1 and esx 2 ).. Now its required to change the service console ip and VLAN ID of esx1 and esx2  hosts and they are in production. I make this plan for that

I'm thinking that if we use vMotion, we can move all clients from esx2 to esx1 and then we can fix the esx2 Service Console ( ip and vlanid) .  Once that's done, move all the clients over to ESX2 so that ESX1 can have Service Console put on VLAN 20.  I'm looking for the VMWare folks to reply as to whether that makes sense.

How many running VM'S can one esx 4 can handle ..

[weinstein5]

With 50 VMs you are no where near the confiduration maximum for the number of VMs an ESX 4 host can handle - the bigger question does you host have the resources to handle the full load - check you ESX CPU amd memroy - but yuo should not have to vmotion your VMs off because changing the Service Console IP will not affect the running VMs

Keep in mind when changing the Service Console IP address your ESX host will become disconnected from vCenter - I would reommend makiing the change from the console with the esxcfg-vswif command -

[GTMcKaige]

KB 4309499 relates to this process as far as the changing IPs part.

Why not move some of the VMs to the ESXi host? You'll probably need to disable HA on your cluster depending on how much RAM you have in each host.

Here's a question though. Why not reinstall the hosts once you move the VMs off with ESXi and have a homogeneous cluster when complete?

[timemachine]

I completely agee with weinstein5 , its not the configurations max coming into picture neithter is it a question of disabling or enabling HA - it boils down to how much total ESX resources available, and its the best option to use command line : refer KB  1003825

TM

[farkasharry]

I totally agree with GTMcKaige. Why not reinstalling your ESX hosts with ESXi and have a homogenous host cluster and you can say goodbye to the service console!