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Vaskomozz
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Failed unrecoverable vCenter with VDS

Hi,

I have one messy environment which I need to fix. The vCenter is failed and has a few corrupted vmdk within vCenter VM and is very hard to be recovered, also backup doesn't exist. My plans are to build a new vCenter from scratch and re-add the hosts to the new vCenter, but I am not sure what will happen with the current vDS configuration which is already on the hosts which are statically bound, can I re-add the hosts to the new vCenter, create the new vDS and to move the VMs to the new vDS port groups and later to delete the vDS from the old vCenter.  

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s_wieland
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Hi @Vaskomozz,

yes, you can add the ESXi hosts to the new vCenter. The VMs will sty connected, the Distributed switch will work, but isn't manageable. So I would recommend to create an additional one and connect it to the host as an additional switch. Maybe you have additional uplinks or you can remove one from the existing DVS and use it as uplink for the new switch. Then you can migrate all the VMs to the new DVS port groups. After all VMs have been migrated, you can delete the old DVS directly from the host and add the uplinks to the new DVS.

I have done this several times, every time without any service interruption.

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ignaciotorres62
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You should be able to install a new vCenter, and carefully recreate a new VDS and then pass the resources to this new one. I've done it in the past. Just be calm and precise. Adding the hosts to the vCenter is not going to erase their configuration.

s_wieland
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Hi @Vaskomozz,

yes, you can add the ESXi hosts to the new vCenter. The VMs will sty connected, the Distributed switch will work, but isn't manageable. So I would recommend to create an additional one and connect it to the host as an additional switch. Maybe you have additional uplinks or you can remove one from the existing DVS and use it as uplink for the new switch. Then you can migrate all the VMs to the new DVS port groups. After all VMs have been migrated, you can delete the old DVS directly from the host and add the uplinks to the new DVS.

I have done this several times, every time without any service interruption.

Vaskomozz
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@s_wieland  @ignaciotorres62, Thanks for your assistance it will be helpful when I re-deploy the Center. Currently, I somehow succeeded in booting the existing one. After I tried several options to consolidate forgotten snapshots, repair bad disks, and manually recreate missed disk descriptor files. In the end, I tried creating a new empty VM and attached existing disks from the old vCenter, and a new VM with the existing disk from the old vCenter was booted successfully. Because the mess still isn't cleaned, this solution will be just temporary to be solved urgent things, and later I plan to deploy the new vCenter and restore the configuration from the old to the new vCenter, of course, cleaned from all technical dept.

Thanks again for your assistance.

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