Migrate vCenter appliance cluster to new hardware

[mmackay21724]

I have a vcenter appliance cluster running on old hardware and need to move to new hardware.

The management cluster is running 6.5 and consists of 3 nodes, and each node has a single VM appliance.   vcenter, vcenter-peer and the vcenter-witness respectively.

We do not have vMotion enabled in this management cluster as it's not needed, but it can be added. This is part of a larger hardware swap out so some shuffling is happening, which will mean I move 2 appliances and then the third.

I have added 2 new servers to the cluster that I would like to move the peer and witness too.   Once they are done I will then pull their old servers and install a new one for the new master.  If this order is wrong then I can change it.

I tried to clone the witness to a new server but my entire vcenter went dead, I had to reset the appliances from esxi to get it functional.  

I assume there is a proper process for doing this, I have looked but could not find it in the docs so any help is greatly appreciated.

[Ajay1988 · Accepted solution]

In the VCHA setup ;  go to   Edit and use the  "Disable   vCenter HA" and then   move the VM's   to new hardware.

[mmackay21724]

Makes sense, will work on that today.

I have a side question/education.   Not understanding the magic under the hood, how does the process work where the active appliance is migrating itself to new hardware, isn’t that a little like grabbing your ankles and trying to lift yourself?

Thanks

Mike