Cross vCenter Migration with different versions

[nal63]

We have two VMware clusters - one on ESXi 7.0 with vCenter 7, and DVS 7. The other is on ESXi 8.0 with vCenter 8.0, and DVS 8. We tried migrating across vCenters (since they are on linked mode), but it fails due to DVS version differences. What is the recommended way of migrating with minimum outage, since version 7.0 cluster is already in production ?

At our disposal are vRPA licenses which could be used for migrations purposes too, but we prefer a more straight forward approach.

Alternatively would having two DVSs - one on 7 and the other on 8, in the same vCenter offer a workaround ?



Thank you for taking the time to read the above. Your input is most appreciated.

[markey165 · Accepted solution]

@nal63 - We hit this issue when we did an Advanced Cross vcenter Migration from 6.7 → 7.0. We enabled hybrid mode on the vDS on 7.0, and that allowed the VMs to migrate across.

Disclaimer Note: - I've since found this VMware KB article which states the above workaround should only be used when migrating from on Prem to Cloud, otherwise VMs might lose connectivity. I'm not sure of the ins and outs of it, but we migrated 400 VMs using the above workaround and had no issues, but obviously proceed at your own risk. Just putting this out there as to how we got round the same issue, in case its useful 😊

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/79446

HTH

[nal63]

thank you markey165.