Move vCenter to another cluster....how?

[LyleRyan]

We're running the vCenter Appliance 5.5.0 and need to move from a cluster with ESX 4.1.0 hosts to a new cluster running ESXi 5.5.0 hosts.  Both clusters are in the same Datacenter, but no common storage.

We've migrated all VM's from the old cluster to the new one using vMotion.  Now it's time for the vCenter itself.

How should I go about this?  Some downtime for vCenter is probably inevitable.

Thanks....Lyle

[Noor2122]

i think you will have to do cold migration...

[AjithDhas]

Hi Lyle,

     You can use vMotion for this as well... I tried with my Setup, and I don't see any downtime...

Regards,

Ajith

[antonmajor]

Shut it down and motion it cold or....i

You mentioned that you were able to vmotion other vm's before this one and you can't move your vcenter because of common storage issue..... Can you storage vmotion to a datastore that has common storage, then vmotion it over?

[LyleRyan · Accepted solution]

With the help of Support, here's what I did:

- make a clone of the vCenter VM to the target cluster & storage, but don't start the new VM

- edit the properties of the new VM so it's MAC address is the same as the old VM

- shutdown vCenter with it's admin web interface

- with vSphere client connected to the source host, shutdown the Guest OS (suse) of the old VM

- with vSpere client connected to the destination host, power-up the new VM

Thanks to all for the comments....Lyle