Changing the IP address of vCenter Server

[Zade]

I am in the process of building a new vCenter environment, we are currently waiting on IPs and patch ports from our networks team but I would like to 'if I can' start building the vCenter server for this environment, it is going to be a virtual server.

We have a test environment in place at the moment which we have a shared iscsi datastore which once the environment has been build we can remove from inventory and re-add to the new environment once complete.

Can anyone see any issues with IP addressing if I build the server with a temp IP then import to my new environment then change the IP?

[JimKnopf99]

Hi,

one hint if you have connected hosts to your vcenter server.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100149...

Frank

[crawfordm]

Which version of vCenter?

[Zade]

vCenter 5.5 update 1c

[crawfordm]

Are you planning to put everything (SSO, Inventory Service, Web Client, vCenter) on the same server?

[Zade]

Yes the only thing which will be on a different server is the database, everything else will be installed on the virtual server.

My plan as we are in the process of building the environment was to:

1. Create VM to be vCenter and install OS
2. Give temp IP
3. Install vCenter from media pointing at our 2012 Test SQL Farm
4. Once installed
5. Configure ESXi 1 which will be in a cluster of 3 in the new environment (With Network/Storage)
6. Migrate VM over shared iscsi from our current test environment to new environment
7. Pull the rest of the ESXi hosts into vCenter
8. Configure the rest of the 2 hosts for new environment

[crawfordm]

Are you going to export the database from your 2012 Test SQL Farm to a new Farm ? 

Changing ip's and databases may be tricky.

May be easier to just do an uninstall and re-install once you have the new ip on the vCenter.  I have done an uninstall and re-install several times when a component changes.  It is much easier to do that, than try to track down every file that needs to be changed or try to figure out why something is not working.

[Zade]

Sorry there maybe abit of confusion, we are keeping our current test environment and this vCenter server will be for an additional license we have (Essentials plus) which we are not using, so our current test infrastructure will be staying in place. I thought I could just get ahead of the game by building the vCenter server within our current environment and migrating via datastores (Remove from inventory) (Add to inventory across our shared datastore.

Our database server is a physical SQL box... so the DB would remain in the same place, it is just the vCenter server IP which would change

[bhards4 · Accepted solution]

Yes,

As you said you have a DB server as physical which will not change even if you are going for production.

So, all you required

1) SSO -- For SSO db if you are using existing DB for that then tha'ts fine, but if you are planning to have additionnel server for DB, there you will find difficulty

2) SQL server for VC - As you said you are using existing DB.. Thats fine

3) Installing vcenter and inventory server..you reqire to have SSO server details. If you are using IP convention for installing VC, there you will find difficulty, where you need to uninstall VC and Inventory services.

Regards,

Sachin Bhardwaj

[Zade]

Thank you, in this case I will hold fire until we have our first ESXi host setup and then build the server