Steps required to migrate to a new vCenter server using Distributed Switches?

[pegasus20111014]

We are currently on version 5.1 of vCenter and ESXi 5.1 on all our host.  We are using a vDS on our current vCenter server and will need to migrate to a new vCenter server soon.  Is there any documentation regarding the steps to migrate to a new vCenter server using distrubuted switches?  We are hoping to achieve this without any downtime.  The problem is that we require vDS on our 10GB network for link aggregation.  If having to migrate the hosts back to standard switches prior to moving them to the new vCenter server, there will be network performance issues.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Since all information about your environment is stored in the vcenter database al you should just be able to stand up the new vCenter server and point it to the existing database

[pegasus20111014]

Actually I do have one more question.  Will restoring the database to the new VMware server work if the IP address is different?  We need to place the new vCenter server on our 10GB network which requires an IP change. The server is currently on our 1GB network.

[VirtuallyMikeB]

Yes, restoring the database will work fine with a different IP.  It sounds like your DB is on the same server as vCenter.  If this is the case, when you build out your new vCenter Server with a local SQL installation, simply restore the database to your new build, install vCenter, pointing to the restored database, choose to *NOT* overwrite the database, and finish the vCenter installation.

All the best,

Mike

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Mike Brown

VMware, Cisco Data Center, and NetApp dude

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