Moving a vCenter server to a new environment

[DefenderAtkins]

Hi all,

I have vSphere A which is made up of 6 hosts, 3 in cluster1 and 3 in cluster2 both managed by vCenter101. This environment has 2 SAN volumes via iSCSI software adapters, resource pools and distributed switches.

I now have to move the cluster1 and the SAN volumes to a entirely new environment called vSphere B which has no access to the old environment but the network addressing will be the same. And I would like to avoid reconfigure everything from scratch.

I thought of cloning the current vCenter101 into vSphere B and use it as its vCenter server since it has the distributed switch and all other config in there.

I have cloned it, moved it to a host in the new environment, connected to the host it is sitting on via vSphere client, disconnected its network adapter, switched it on, changed the IP address, restarted vMware services and logged onto itself using vSphere client and I can log in. I can also see all the old configs. VMs, DVSwitches, port groups, etc. It just shows everything is not responding because it is isolated.

Now if I connect it to the management network of the new environment (same IP addressing), will it work? Has anyone tried it before?

Thanks

[ashwin_prakash]

Configuring new vCenter server B and connecting the host.

1. Inorder to move the hosts to the new vCenter, You could migrate and import the distributed switch configuration from vCenter A to vCenter B.

2. Once you have the configuration, you could manually connect the hosts to the new vCenter B, if there are 2 uplinks.

Now if I connect it to the management network of the new environment (same IP addressing), will it work? Has anyone tried it before?

Ans: Since the hosts would be in disconnected status, You would have to enter the password for the host to connect back to the new vCenter server.

[DefenderAtkins]

Hi Ashwin,

Thanks for your answer.

The hosts and VMs are not in disconnected state in the new vCenter because it is a clone of the old vCenter.

They show up as not responding:

Now would it work if I connect this vCenter server to the appropriate network and right click on the hosts and "reconnect" ?

I have the root credentials of all my hosts anyway. What I want to know before trying this is 1.) would it work? and 2.) can you think of any potential problems?

Thanks heaps.

[ashwin_prakash]

1. Once you have the vCenter back on the network, You should be able to reconnect the host without any issues.

2. Since the host configuration is already on the vCenter, there should not be any issues while reconnecting.

3. Disable any configuration like HA and DRS before reconnecting.

4. Reconnect one host first by moving all the VM off that host from the old vCenter, so that you can be sure that there would not be any issues while reconnecting on the Cloned vCenter.

[DefenderAtkins · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

Just an update:

I shut down everything and physically moved the hosts, switches and SAN to a new location.

Racked and stacked em, reconnected, and powered them on.

Then I isolated the cloned vCenter server from the network, consoled into it and changed the IP to be in the same management portgroup as the hosts. Then I connected the NIC to the portgroup, restarted all vmware services, then I had to go and do something else.

When I came back and tried to access one of the host via vSphere Client, it prompted the message saying this host is being managed by the vCenter server I just connected. The hosts already "knows" that they should be connecting to this vCenter server. This surprised me because I thought I had to edit the config file in each host and point them to the new IP they are supposed to connect to.

Anyway, when I logged into the vCenter server, everything is there, all config, SAN, network. Everything! and everything just works.

Happy days.

Cheers