Shared Nothing migration of vCenter server

[iforbes]

Hi. I've been performing vm migrations from legacy ESXi servers and SAN to new ESXi servers and SAN. I've been using the Shared nothing migration feature (i.e. migrate both compute and storage). It's worked perfectly up until the last vm. I chose to migrate the vCenter vm last in case of issues.

The vCenter vm is on a legacy ESXi server and stored on the local datastore of that server (that's what customer wants for a variety of reasons). I chose the shared nothing migration to move it from the legacy/local ESXi/storage to the new/local ESXi server. The migration got to 97% and is just sitting there.

All ESXi servers (both legacy and new) now show as "not responding", vm's show as "disconnected" - but all ESXi servers and vm's are up and running fine. It's just the vCenter view is showing as not responding/disconnected.

I think during the last steps of the shared nothing migration, the vm must get disconnected from the source ESXi server and registered on the target ESXi server. I can confirm that when I log directly into the legacy ESXi server I no longer see the vCenter vm, whiile I do see it on the target ESXi server.

I think the issue is on the storage side. On the legacy ESXi server I still see the vCenter folder and files (.vmdk, .vmx, etc). I also see the vCenter folder and files on the target ESXi server. So, something is in flux. At this point I'm not sure what to do for vCenter to totally be up and running on the target ESXi server, and completly gone from the legacy ESXi server.

[daphnissov]

vCenter is required for the switchover as you have found out, so what you'll probably have to do is present a temporary datastore on the source side, migrate vCenter to that, shutdown vCenter, and register it on the target side. This obviously assumes source and target host(s) have access to the same datastore.

[iforbes]

At this point although vCenter is up, I cannot do anything with the vcenter vm in vCenter as is showing as "disconnected". So, how do I go about migrating vCenter to the temp datastore? Also, as mentioned if I connect directly to the target ESXi server I see vCenter registered there - although I don't see it registered on that same ESXi server if I view from vCenter UI.

[daphnissov]

You may need to power it off and remove any registrations from the source side (if applicable), then bring it up once again. If hosts still show disconnect, right-click one and try to connect it and see if throws an error.