upgrade windows vcenter 5.1 with external oracle database to virtual appliance 6

[michiel1981]

Hey people,

We have a Windows Vcenter 5.1 server with an external oracle database. We would like to upgrade to a Vcenter virtual appliance v6 with an external oracle database. I haven't been able to find much info on this since most posts and blogs are about postgress or sql.

Is it just as simple as rolling out a fresh install of a Vcenter virtuall appliance v6 and then connecting it with our current oracle databse and switch over the virtual machines and turn of the old 5.1 server?

Gr,

Michiel

[akodenkiri · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

You can not directly upgrade windows vcenter 5.1 with external oracle database to virtual appliance 6. You can upgrade windows vcenter 5.1 with external oracle database to windows vCenter 6.0 with external oracle database.

As of now officially VMware does not support migration from Windows to vCSA. But there is fling, you can explore more

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcs-to-vcva-converter

Regards

[michiel1981]

Thanks, that is what i was looking for

[mohamedk]

Hi,

I see in requirements that the database must be External Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 or later for the vCenter Database (VCDB). Is it possible to convert using an external Oracle database ? If yes, was it successful ?

Thank you

[vHaridas]

vcs to vcsa Fling do not support External Oracle Database.

However you can migrate Oracle Database to SQL and then migrate Windows vCenter to Appliance vCenter.

See comments section for more information ( search Oracle )

VCS to VCVA Converter

Sébastien Bernard has posted this - you may fine more on above page. also see the requirements section for detailed requirements for vcsa migration .

Hi,
just a comment to say we converted our 2 vcenters on production to VCSA.
Migration went well from Oracle Database to SQL Server then VCVA to migrate the vcenter to the appliance.

We fell into 3 issues:
1- in VPX_PARAMETER, the key 'VirtualCenter.AutoManagedIpV4' existed in two version differing by the case.
Oracle had zero problem with it, SQL Server choked hard. Deleting the key with the null value resolved the problem.
2- Stats were inserted into the VPX_HIST_STAT1_* but nothing on the STAT2 showed up.
After analyzis, it seems the ORACLE version of rollup_stats differs from the procedure from other databases.
On sql server and postgresql, the rollup looks for a device with name '' whereas oracle rollup just take the device with id =1. This device is special and its counters are used as default values to compare with.
On postgresql after migration, the device_null_id was not found and no counter were created for this reason.
Renaming the vpx_device id=1 name to '' fixed the problem (at the time, the value seems to be a subtle combination of blank chars).
3- vcsa update 3 has a bug that prevents the collection of certains counters.
The problem is acked by vmware to be fixed in 5.5u3a.
At this time setting stats collection to level 2 is working ok, any level higher results in no data collected.
We're now running at this level waiting for the fix.

Hope our ride helps people avoid those pitfalls.