I lost my vCenter...

[agabellini]

Hello,

during the upgrade of vCenter from 5.0 to 5.1 I had some problems, and now I just reinstalled all the software and used a fresh database.

All VMs on my 3 ESXi hosts are up. The old vCenter had a cluster with EVC and HA enabled.

Is it possible to just add the hosts to the new vCenter Cluster without shutting down the VMs? or is there a procedure?

Thanks,

Andrea

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

If you create a cluster using the exact same EVC baseline as before you should be able to add the hosts back without the need to power off the guests.  However, there is a chance you may have to power off the guests to add the hosts into the cluster.

[spravtek]

Hello ...

Yes, normally this is possible, you might get an error/warning that your host is currently being managed by a(nother) vCenter server, but you should be able to bypass that.

Your VM's should not be shut down for it either ...

[agabellini]

Hello,

thanks for the answers!!!

I just connected my Client to every ESXi hosts and I noticed that EVC mode is "Disabled" and HA mode id "N/A".

I also have the option to disassociate the hosts from vCenter.

So can I try to create a new Cluster with the same EVC mode, disassociate ESXi from vcenter, and then add them to the new vCenter?

Thanks,

Andrea

[Troy_Clavell]

yes.

[agabellini]

Hello,

I have succesfully added my Hosts to the new vCenter. The procedure was:

- Disassociate each Host from the old vCenter

- Create a cluster in the new vCenter with HA disabled and EVC mode equal to the old one

- Connect each host directly into the new cluster. If vCenter claim about the EVC mode, just add the host at the Data Center level and when connected move it to the cluster.

- Enable and configure again the HA in the new cluster

Thank you all for the help!

Andrea

[HudsonLR]

Lost any configuration from hosts ? (VM nets, loading balance configuration, etc).

[agabellini]

Hello,

with the procedure that I wrote all went well 🙂

Andrea

[HudsonLR]

hmm, nice. Same problem here, lost vcenter and oracle database. I Will recreate all tablespaces and users needed and install vCenter, but all VMs on hosts are running and being acessed by users.

There's any downtime in that procedure you have done ?

[agabellini]

Hello,

downtime = 0 here. I hope didn't was just luck 🙂

Andrea