Our network team is cutting over the data center to a new network. Core distribution and top of rack switches are being replaced. What is the best way to prepare our ESXi clusters for this outage? We have several requirements: 1. We do not want to power down the VMs. There are over 800 VMs that would take hours to shutdown and start up after the cutover completes. 2. We don't want the cluster to lose access to vSAN.
I know it's not possible to put a host into maintenance mode while maintaining power to the VMs. Is it possible to put a DS into maintenance mode? Can the network on each host be paused or disconnected while keeping VMs powered up?
I figured to ask these questions before testing some of the scenarios in a lab. Please let me know if you've had experience with a task similar to this. Thank you in advance.