Convert clustered VMs from HV 2016 to ESXi 6.7

[LMSADSA]

Hi

We have converted standalone VMs in HV to ESXi using vmWare converter and it works fine. For clustered VMs which used VHDS (shared vhds among the clustered VMs), we didn't find any useful links to convert them and use with ESXi hosts. Looking for advice on conversion and best practice to be followed

Thanks in advance

[VysakhNair]

LMSADSA​

What services is clustered on this VMs ?

[LMSADSA]

SQL cluster with one instance (later there may be multiple instances). 3 VHDS are configured and shared between the VMs. One for Quorum and other used by SQL cluster instance 1. Shared vmdk with ESXI clustered hosts won't make sense since we place one VM on one ESXi host and the second in another ESXi host. So what we plan is to do a normal conversion of VMs (power off the VMs and convert first VM with all disks connected, not sure how shared disk / vhds works & convert second VM with the OS drive), then from vCenter share the VMDK among the 2 VMs. We never ever configured RDMs, so need to have look on RDMs and has to find out a way to configure RDMs and connect with clustered VMs, also we didn't find anyway to convert from vmdk to RDM (OS level file copy using a tool such as Robocopy looks to be a solution, but afraid to do so because there might be file / folder level permission missing once we copied all data from VMDK to RDM in OS level)

Please suggest ....

[VysakhNair]

LMSADSA​

For MSSQL 2 node cluster, you can have below approaches.

P2V the SQL Cluster VMs drives except the shared disks (Which will require more downtime and risky)

1. P2V the Operating system drive(C: drive) of both nodes

2. Check the VM is working without connecting the network

3. Add three shared RDM disks(physical mode) as per the requirement(1 disk for Quorum and two disk for Data)

4. Plan the downtime of production cluster - Only stop the SQL services to make sure no one is accessing the database

5. Power on any one of new VM with a temporary IP - To copy the data from old to new

6. Make new disks online on new VM(Provide same drive letter and Name like old server) and accessible from old VM

7. Robocopy the Data drives as it is with folder structure and permission

8. Shutdown both old servers after data copy/ check the data integrity(size and permission)

9. Bring up the other new VM - MS Cluster/SQL services will fail

10. Configure new quorum disk - make MS cluster online after this

11.Configure both Data disks on cluster - make SQL Cluster online after this

12. check your services

Create a new cluster in VMware Infrastructure (Less downtime and easy- You can plan in non production hours)

1. Create a new SQL cluster (same version) with shared RDM disks

2. Take application downtime for each database.

3. Migrate you application one by one(backup and restore database)

4. provide same user access for application to database access