Migrate VCSA 6.5 from standard to vDS?

[drheim]

We have 6.5 vcenter and ESXIhosts.  Vcenter server is virtual(VCSA).  We have all VMs migrated to vDS, except for the VSAN witness virtual host, and our VCSA itself.  Are there any issues migrating the VCSA itself from a standard to a distributed switch?  If that change is fine, can it move itself pretty easily while the server is running? Thanks,

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

There is no issue, per se, but understand that you create a circular dependency when you do so (the vDS is provided by the vCSA to which itself is connected). To fix this, you should create a second port group with an ephemeral binding that can be used as a "rescue" port group if vCenter is down and you need to bring it back up manually.

[drheim]

If that is the case, am I not just better off leaving the VCSA on a vSS?

[daphnissov]

It kind of depends on what your goals/requirements are. Yes, it's one less thing to deal with, but a very hefty negative is the requirement to waste at least one vmnic. Two separate switches cannot share the same uplink(s), so if you stay with a vSS only for vCSA then you have to dedicate at least one vmnic per host just for that function. As you can see, that's pretty wasteful of a perfectly good pNIC.