Move cluster from one VC to another

[dominic7]

Scenario:

Right now I have 1 VC, and due to scaling issues with VC I need to add a second virtualcenter. It's also on the other side of the continent FWIW. Now, on the existing VirtualCenter, I have a few clusters that have non-functioning vMotion. They were set up wrong at inception and I had no part of that setup. Generally, to get a host out of a cluster I'd just evacuate all the VMs and put it in maintenance mode, since vMotion doesn't work on these nodes that's not going to work here. So I can't put these hosts into maintenance mode to remove them from their non-functioning clusters since that would cause an outage.

Is there a way to forcibly add a host to a new VC? Regardless of previous cluster membership?

Thanks,

Dominic

[oreeh]

Is there a way to forcibly add a host to a new VC? Regardless of previous cluster membership?

I'm not aware of such functionality.

Wouldn't it be easier to simple get the VMotion working on these clusters?

[dominic7]

Unfortunately not. These 'clusters' appear to be just collections of ESX hosts, they don't share common networks which prevents me from just fixing them and moving on with my day.

[Chamon]

What would happen if you were to remove the vpxuser off of the Host? Would it then allow you to add it to a different cluster? The old cluster would not have access to it any longer. It may still show up as a unreachable host in your current cluster though. The VMs would still run outside of the cluster. What do you think?

[dominic7]

I don't think removing the vpxuser would allow me to add the host to another VC. To be honest I'm not sure of what all the hooks that VC plants into the ESX server and I have to be a bit cautious, the hosts are in use and have approximately 40 VMs each on them.

[Chamon · Accepted solution]

I can defiantly understand that. I just tried the following on our test environment. However it was on the same VC server.

I deleted the vpxuser on the host restarted mgmt-vmware and then the VC said that the host was unreachable. I created a second cluster on the same VC and attempted to add the host there. No luck. Went back to the first cluster and selected remove host. It gave me a warning that this will remove the host and all VMs. Selected OK and it removed (destroyed) the host. Moved down to my new cluster and added host. That worked but then it said (disconnected). Right clicked the host and selected connect. It connected and the VMs were still up and running. I had to reconfigure for HA 2 times but it did seam to work.

Not that this is a good solution but maybe it will give you some other ideas. Good luck.

[dominic7]

That seems to work. I can just disconnect the host, then remove it from VC. Then I can add it back in to the new VC.

Thanks for the help.

-Dominic

[Chamon]

Did you have to delete the vpxuser or were you able to just disconect it from the cluster and add it to the second one?

[dominic7]

Just disconnect and then remove. Then I could add them back in where ever I wanted. Like you I have yet to actually do this on my 2 VCs ( still building the second one ) but conceptually it looks like it will work.