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Ineedhelpbadly
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Migrating vms from domain.1 to domain.2

After a bit of thinking and a bit more understanding.  I know what I need.

A customer has avsphere 6.5, running three old physical dell servers that are running as a host on slow (7,200 disks).  On one server sits the webclient where everything has been built.  A typical normal setup.  

What has happened is that the company has been split in two, some stuff is being decommissioned and some stuff is being kept. One thing that they are scrapping is the vcentre server.  I have tried to talk to the customer and explain that it would be better if we kept the vcentre server and we did an in place windows upgrade (It is running server 2008.)  The company either doesn't have a lot of money, or, they're not willing to spend any money.

This is where I got confused.  What I did was I built a new vcentre inside the vcentre, which I now realise didn't work, because it couldn't see the storage or the instance.  Is there a way of having a new instance (see attachment) or, do I need to build a new 6.5 vcentre inside the instance and then share the storage?

In essense domain.1 vms and then I make a new vm that's domain.2 and then each vcentre shares the storage?

 

I have found this document that covers it:

https://vmvtips.com/2020/03/02/migrate-vm-different-sso/ but I don't know if it will migrate everything, or things that I want to migrate.

 

I also found this document https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/5850444 

Finally, I also found this. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2106952?lang=en_US&queryTerm=2106952

 

If I can do a migration from instance to instance, do I need another licence for this?  Or can it be done for free?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

It's not the vCenter Server instance which connects to the storage, it's the ESXi hosts. vCenter will only show the storage that's attached to ESXi hosts in its inventory.

André

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Ineedhelpbadly
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Would that mean I need to separate instances of 6.5 then?  As in two licenses?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

From a technical point of view you can split the licenses, but from a legal point of view it depends on how the companies are split. To find out about this, please  contact VMware sales, or their licensing department.

André

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Ineedhelpbadly
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

it won't be like that forever, just until the migration  is completed and splitting the licensing while the hosts are being moved.  Ultimately, would I also need more hosting solutions?  You can share the storage, but I haven't seen that you can share the boxes.

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

@Ineedhelpbadly 

If this thread replaces the other you created, you should mark it as solved so others don’t continue to try and help there without realising

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-vSphere-Discussions/URGENT-HELP-VM-migration-to-a-different...

 


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a_p_
Leadership
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It's actually pretty easy.

  • VMs run on ESXi hosts, i.e. ESXi hosts provides the resources like CPU, RAM, storage, networking, ...
  • ESXi hosts can be managed by a vCenter Server instance (a host can only be part of a single vCenter Server instance)

So if you want/need a vCenter Server instance for each of the split company parts, each of these vCenter Server instances must have at least one ESXi host connected, on which the company's VMs can run.

André

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Ineedhelpbadly
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Would there be any impact if you changed the domain?  For example if you host was domaina and you changed the vm to domainb, would you need to make any changes to the vm or the database?

 

Also, I have just realised there's more than one version of vcentre.  There's the esxi host and the vcentre web client.  And i have just seen VCSA, which replaces vcentre.

Would the VM migration tool pretty much do everything I wanted it to do?

 

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