Connecting a vCenter w/embedded PSC to a vCenter w/external PSC

[ckirkpatrick]

Guys,

I have two production 6.0 U2 vCenters w/embedded PSC's that are not replicating. They have the default vsphere.local domain and no site id. I built two additional vCenters(an East and West site) w/external PSC's that are replicating. What would be the path to get the production enviornment over to the new vCenters? Would it be to reinstall or upgrade over top of the production systems and at the PSC piece, point to an existing PSC and use the ones that I intend to migrate too? Does anyone know of any documentation that steps you through this type of migration?

Chuck

[jasoncain_22]

Chuck,

Please check out the supported topologies for 6.0U2 with multiple PSCs and Multiple vCenters in the same SSO domain.

List of recommended topologies for VMware vSphere 6.0.x (2108548) | VMware KB

I have configured Multi-Site SSO domains but I use a Load Balancer for each site and a pair of external PSCs behind each.

[ckirkpatrick]

Jason,

I have looked at the link you provided before and I see that what I am looking to do is supported. I am just unsure of how to get there. I have two vCenters that are replicating. I have two others that are not with embedded PSC's. The two non-replicating sites are our production sites. How do I go about getting the production site PSC's to replicate to the new sites? Would that be through an UPGRADE process, where I would point to an existing PSC to use for the vCenter and point to one of my new replicating sites? Or is that not possible with an UPGRADE. My only option is to power down our vm's and move them to the new vCenters put that is a lousy option.

[virtualg_uk]

I have just done this (with one VC) on a customer's production site:

I followed: Reconfiguring and Repointing Deployment Models in vCenter Server 6.0 Update 1

I believe the section you need is: Reconfigure an Embedded Deployment to an External Deployment

Note: Recall that before you can reconfigure an embedded deployment to an external deployment you must first deploy an external Platform Services Controller that is a replication partner to the embedded Platform Services Controller. Thus, these instances belong to the same SSO Domain (e.g. vsphere.local).

I suppose you will need to do this for your second VC as well but I am not sure how the two new PSCs will work as they need to be on the same SSO domain.

If you already have East and West created with correct SSO domain and site setup then I would personally look at copying over the configuration of the old VCs and importing your hosts. You might face issues with backup/replication/monitoring software so you'll need to re-configure those.

In the site I just did this for, there was a live site with one VC in embedded psc mode and a DR site with the same setup.

I completed the above instructions from the blog post on the live VC without issue (deploy new external PSC as replication partner to the embedded PSC, reconfigure VC to replicate to new PSC, ) and for the DR site I just installed a new external PSC and a new VC and copied the config over & reconnected hosts to the new VC. When deploying the PSC for the DR site I ensured it was on the same SSO domain as the live site but created it on a new site ID so that there ended up being a LIve and a DR site within the same SSO domain. This let me use enhanced link mode for "Single pane of glass" administration.

So I ended up with the following supported topology:

• 1 Single Sign-On domain
• 2 or more Single Sign-On sites
• 2 or more external Platform Services Controllers
• 2 or more vCenter Server with external Platform Services Controller

Hope this helps