Scan reading through the vCenter 6.7 release notes - a key thing that caught my eye was that we no longer have to worry about complex external PSC and load balancer configurations to get linked mode - Hooray!

I have two questions about it if anyone knows….

1. To move from a vSphere 6.0 multi-site, 2 x PSC’s in an HA config with custom certs + 1 vCenter per site config, to the single embedded vCenter 6.7 per site model, am I right in thinking that we’d have to complete a full upgrade to 6.7 first, and then deploy a new embedded appliance, and backup and restore vcenter into the new embedded appliance?

Seems pretty brutal, but I really do despise the whole PSC / HA / HLB setup, would be glad to get away from it.

2. Aside from SSO performance, what would be the downsides of moving from an external to an embedded model with 6.7?

Thanks

before we can not Migrate from External PSC to Embedded.

can we migrate with new release 6.7 ?

There is no way currently to migrate from external PSC to embedded PSC. This is something that is being worked on, though.

I want to upgrade from 6.0 w/ external PSC to 6.7 Embedded, is there a KB on how to acoplish this.

Thank you

The only way to do this currently is to deploy a new vCenter Server. There is no way to migrate from external PSC to embedded PSC. But this is something we're working on so my recommendation is to upgrade to 6.7 and keep your external PSC rather then starting over with a new vCenter Server. The goal is to provide a migration path in the future.

OK understood - since the upgrade process technically involves deploying new vcenter appliances anyway, I guess when you say 'deploy new vcenter server', this means there is currently no automated process to transfer SSO and vcenter DB data into a different topology? - so, basically, the upgrade wizards can only upgrade like-for-like appliances?

Is there a time frame for building this external-to-embedded migration feature?  Moving to a new vcenter would be a hard pill to swallow for us - multiple customers / sub companies sharing a centralised linked mode vcenter model, distributed switches everywhere, multiple VSAN instance etc....oof.

If the embedded model offers feature parity, I think I'd be inclined to wait for vsphere release that provided a migration path to this simplified deployment architecture.  Depends how long we can hang on.

Thanks for your advice!

Any updates on this? Any ideas of the timeframe?

Hi Adam, vmEck,

Thanks for clarifying that for us - very informative.

We currently use VMware Horizon DaaS who's interoperability lags behind a lot of other VMware products. For example, the highest supported vCenter version is 6.5 U1. We're just about to deploy DaaS 8 into two new greenfield sites.

So, knowing that I can only deploy a vSphere environment up to 6.5 U1, which of the following options is more desirable bearing in mind I'd like to eventually get to embedded PSCs (if it's even going to be a supported upgrade path) in the long run.

1. External PSCs, same SSO domain and use ELM between the two vCenter servers
2. External PSCs, different SSO domain, no ELM
3. Embedded PSCs, same SSO domain and no ELM
4. Embedded PSCs, different SSO domain and no ELM

I want to give myself a clear path with the hope that IF an upgrade will be developed for 6.5 U1 to 6.7 with embedded PSCs, I do not paint myself into the corner. I'm just trying to think of the implications if I have a single SSO domain name space (either embedded/external) and how that may have an impact on the upgrade process. Perhaps I'm second guessing something I obviously have no way to control!

Your input would be much appreciated Adam! Thanks so much for reading!

The only thing I can really say is that the intention is to provide a path from external to embedded. So, do what makes sense for you now. Hopefully there is a migration path in the future.

Hello

Is there a timeline for when this will be possible?

Thanks

Also looking for an update on the migration from an external PSC (6.0 U3) to an embedded (6.7)... TIA

[checks latest VMworld Updates...]

It's called the vCenter Server Converge Tool

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/08/under-the-hood-vsphere-6-7-update-1.html

Essentially, you have to go with the in-place upgrade to 6.7 U1, then run the vCenter Server Converge Tool to move your external PSC data to the embedded PSC, lastly decommissioning your external PSC.

Hi,

Migrating External PSC to embedded PSC is now supported in ESXi 6.7 Update 1.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/08/under-the-hood-vsphere-6-7-update-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2018/11/external-platform-services-controller-a-thing-of-the-past.html

Regards,

Sachin Bhardwaj

Yep, converged all 6 of our vcenters last month - went well.

Only gotchas were:

- Disabling backup schedule before starting

- using the --skip-domain-handling option, because our identity source name differed from the domain the PSC was joined to (id source was the parent domain in the same forest, vcenters were joined to a child domain).  I had to run a manual domain-join after the converge.