Migrate vSAN Clusters to new VCSA

[andvm]

Need to move all Hosts in vSphere 7 vSAN Clusters to a new vCenter to be setup in another region/network.

By move I mean their management plane as the Hosts will remain the same.

From what I see one of the requirements is to have anything running on dVS moved over to vSS such as uplinks, vmkernels, PortGroups etc... (Its all on dedicated dVS's and with redundant uplinks for Management/vMotion/vSAN and VM traffic)

Is there a best practice solution/approach to move vSAN Clusters to vSS and remove them from current VCSA and join them to new VCSA?

Thanks

[Lalegre]

@andvm,

As you will have the two vCenters at the same time, you could Export/Import the VDS configuration to the new vCenter. The steps and best practice to follow to move the vSAN Cluster are mentioned here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151610

[andvm]

thanks @Lalegre 

So from what I see a good part of it will be about creating Standard Switches (vSS's) for each Service and VM Traffic along with respective portgroups and then moving uplinks, vmkernels and VM Traffic to them.

Then on new VCSA import dVS's and PortGroups from backups and revert the above work to move back from vSS's to Distributed Switches (dVS's)

Was also hoping there would be some solution that would allow you to move Management plane from one VCSA to a new one without having to move all connectivity via vSS's but seems there isn't.

[Lalegre]

@andvm,

Actually, that is what I mentioned, there is an option to preserve the VDS if your Export/Import it, it is mentioned also in the KB. Otherwise you will need to follow the VSS alternative.

[andvm]

@Lalegre yes I understand that the VDS can be exported from source vCenter and imported into destination vCenter, just not sure if this changes anything about the migration plan to new vCenter and if it would help me avoid taking the VSS alternative?

Let me know if understood this wrong and there is a simple way of just disconnect/unregister the Host from Source vCenter and connect/register to Destination vCenter when the dVS Switch/es and PortGroups have all been exported from Source to Destination vCenter.

This would be great if the above can be done when Management/vMotion/vSAN and VM Traffic are all connected via dVS's and Host can simply be re-attached to imported DVS's/PortGroups on Destination vCenter. Even better if there would be no downtime expected to VMs.

For example the following link still says to create and move Host to Standard Switch after exporting VDS so not sure how the VSS route can be avoided - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1029498

[Lalegre]

@andvm,

You are right here, seems that the KB inside the one I shared points to moving to VSS first, and the only is providing is the way of Export/Import to avoid doing the VDS configuration once again.

In that case, I believe the path from VDS to VSS is a must to ensure everything goes smoothly.

[andvm]

@Lalegre - I am wondering if Advanced Cross vCenter vmotion would also work especially if I had to move all workload off from vSAN to FC SAN Storage?

If out of current 6x Host cluster I start by removing 2 of them and register them to the new vCenter (with same dvSwitches/LAG/PortGroups pre-setup), would I be able to migrate VMs to new vCenter and then gradually do rest of Hosts/VM's until all Cluster is moved?

Basically destination storage and network would remain the same when migrating VM's across vCenter (Source/Destination Hosts will be in same DC and actually same rack)

Let me know your thoughts as this could be a way of removing the requirement of having to reconfigure Hosts networking such as moving all connectivity to Standard Switches/PortGroups apart from giving the possibility to migrate VMs to new VCSA in a granular way.

Thanks