vCenter Server Appliance 6 HOSTNAME CHANGE

[fcollerette]

Hi everyone,

I'm running into a problem with my VCSA.

We migrated, sucessfully, our VCSA 5.5 to VCSA 6 a little while ago.

We are now in need of changing the FQDN of the VCSA.

So I logged in with the "administrator@vsphere.local" in the Web client and went in Administration -> Deploiement -> System configuration -> Nodes

I went into Networking and got the " com.vmware.appliance.version1.networking.dns.hostname.set: Hostname is used as network identity, set operation is not allowed.

Details: {} "

We are configured with a static IP and our DNS server is correctly setup.

We rebooted the server quite a few times with still the same error.

Thanks for your help.

[vmEck]

This is expected behavior.

Changing the Primary Network Identifier (PNID) of the vCenter Server or PSC is currently not supported and will cause the vSphere services to fail to start. If the vCenter Server or PSC has been deployed with an FQDN or IP as the PNID, you will not be able to change this configuration.

VMware KB: Changing the IP address or hostname of the vCenter Server or Platform Service controller ...

[fcollerette]

Ok so I can'T do it by renmaing .. how can I do it ?

Can I do a vCenter 6 to vCenter 6 migration ? (similar to what I did with 5.5 to 6)

[unsichtbare]

Although I haven't tested it, I suspect that you could back-up the database of the old VCSA install a new VCSA with the desired hostname, and then restore the database

[vmEck]

Backup/Restore of just the vCenter database is not enough to fully restore a vCenter. Some of the state data lives outside as part of the Inventory Service along with SSO (if using the embedded PSC). Certificates will also not be restored because they are not kept in the vCenter database.

There is no way to change the hostname (PNID) of vCenter (Windows or vCSA) after deployment. A reinstallation is required.

[unsichtbare]

Agreed, but the database contains much of what the user wishes to preserve. The OS is responsible for the hostname, SSL, etc.

Don't you suppose that by installing a new VCSA with the new hostname and restoring the database would accomplish exactly what is desired?

[vmEck]

It may or may not work. I've seen it go successfully as well as fail - depends on config. The bottom line is that it is unsupported and so the OP would be taking a big risk by attempting to do this.

[fcollerette]

Okay .. what about "moving" to another vCenter server.

I know that vCenter support high availability ... could I just got in HA ... and kill the old one afterwards ?

I knoq this is probably far fetched but I don't have much ideas to correct this error.

[fcollerette]

Better yet .. you always refer to the PNID

Instead of trying to change that, can I simply add another ? Secondary Network ID (SNID)

[vmEck]

Unfortunately you require a full reinstall of vCenter and you'll have to migrate the resources (hosts, VMs, etc) to the new vCenter with the new name.

[fcollerette]

I just think ti's an oversight from VMWare.

A vCenter server could be called to change name during it's lifetime.

I just find it odd that no precedure (lenghty or not) was made in those scenario.

It's not like I had a warning "The name cannot be changed after the migration" when I did my upgrade.

I don't remember the migration guide saying something like that either.

I'm trying to be creative

[vmEck]

I completely understand. I'm not sure exactly why it is this way but you are by far not the first person to run into this

It is on the radar to be fixed in a future release. Let's assume you were able to use your creativity and accomplish the name change. It would not be supported so that is a huge risk and not one I would advise you take. Sorry for the bad news but I'm hoping we can get this fixed in the future to allow customers the flexibility they need.

[fcollerette]

Ok let's say I wanna get reckless  and try the backup/restore thing proposed earlier.

What would be the steps ?

I tried :

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=...

But my backups weight on 162mb, which is really too small for it to contain all my performance data.

What am I missing ?

P.S. I'm doing this "in lab" so I can tinker with it quite some bit.

Thanks again for your help.

[fcollerette]

Any news on that ?

It's been 2 months now.

Do you know if VMWare is planning this fonctionnality in the near futur ?

[vmEck]

Its still being discussed for the next version. It won't happen in vSphere 6 due to the amount of architectural changes that would be required.

[gazzam86]

I have the exact same issue with the hostname being the default "localhost.localdom" from esx 5.0 days. Migrating to a new vcenter is not really an option when using vDS, clusters etc unless someone can suggest an easy path to migrate environment across.

[vmEck]

You can use PowerCLI to do this migration. It does get tricky, no doubt about it, because your new vCenter will have a new UUID and all of your hosts, VMs, and other objects will get new moref IDs. That can be annoying for monitoring and backup tools. But I have worked with quite a few customers who have done it and have been successful. There is no easy button, unfortunately.

[vmEck]

Tom, you're understanding that correctly. We deprecated support for replication between embedded PSCs in 6.0 (See VMware KB: List of recommended topologies for VMware vSphere 6.0.x).

PSCs can absolutely be deployed as appliances and I would recommend that method of deployment. (Oh, I see you're edit now )

I'll have to defer the pricing/packaging question. I'm not sure that's been decided yet.

[pallahue1]

Does anyone have information (blogs, KB, articles etc) on how to successfully migrate from one vCenter server appliance to another in order to effect a hostname change?

[Knurmia]

I ran into the same issue when I wanted to change the hostname of vCenter. Since there isn't a supported way to change the hostname, I just created a CNAME on the DNS server to point to the old vCenter name.

Now I can connect to the vCenter either using the old server name or the CNAME.

Not the most elegant solution, but beats figuring out a good way to migrate everything to a new vCenter.