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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

Moving VCenter 6.5

Im running VShere 5.5  Essentials.  I migrated to VSPhere VCEnter 6.5  on the 5.5 host.  I know have my 6.5 host and want to move VCEnter to the 6.5 host.  What is the best way to do this?  Can I just run the installer and have it migrate from the 5.5 host  to 6.5 host.     I have migrated my vm's to new 6.5 hosts, no just have vcenter 6.5 running on one old 5.5 host.   I guess I could try upgrading vmware on the 5.5 host tp 6.5, but would rather not mess with that.  

Any recommendations?

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ashilkrishnan
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi

If you can't vMotion vCenter VM, you can manually register it on 6.5 host provided the same datastore is accessible by 5.5 and the 6.5 host

Following step holds good when you are not using distributed switches and other VMware solutions registered to vCenter:

1. Connect directly to the 5.5 host using vSphere client where the vCenter VM resides

2. Shutdown vCenter VM --> Right click and remove it from inventory

3. Connect to the 6.5 host via web UI --> Browse the datastore where vCenter VM resides --> Open the folder and look for a .vmx file -->  Select and register that to ESXi host

Hope that helps

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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks.   I will try and see if I can copy the folder to the NAS it has access to.

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RajeevVCP4
Expert
Expert

Please explain your question again

What you completed ?

What is remained ?

What is end result you want?

Rajeev Chauhan
VCIX-DCV6.5/VSAN/VXRAIL
Please mark help full or correct if my answer is use full for you
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berndweyand
Expert
Expert

how did you migrated the vm from 5.5 to 6.5 ?

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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

Problem

VMWAre  5.5 ESXi  Essentials     has    VCEnter 6.5 installed on local storage

VMWare 6.5 ESXi  Essentials hosts has local storage and producion vm's shutdown and moved over to it.

I need to move the   VCenter 6.5 appliance  to the 6.5  EXi host.

When I installed VCEnter 6.5  on 5.5  host,  I did  not have an operational 6.5 host, so I decided to update it first and the use it to migrate all VM's to 6.5 host(s).

All I have left now is  VCenteer 6.5   virtual appliance on the 5.5 host.

I do have a NFS  NAS that both hosts have access to.    Before I upgrade the 5.5  ESXi host,  I want to move VCEnter and then will add RAM, and new drives to the hos and re-install 6.5 clean.

I have thought of possibly stopping the Vcenter 6.5 virtual appliance and copying it to the NAS and then back to 6.5 host by logging into console via SSH, but not sure if that will work.  I tried to export it to OVA file  and then copy over the original .vmx and .vmxf file, but that did not work.

It would be nice if I could just run the VC 6.5 installer again and have it migrate the VC from the 5.5 host to the 6.5 host.

Update 9/24/20 8:00 PM PST

Shut down VCEnter 6.5  VM  I used  ssh to access the 5.5  host and then copied the VC appliance folder to shared NAS.   Unregistered the VCenter from the 5.5 host.  Then registered it on the 6.5 host.

The VM Starts.  Host complains about guest os not being correct, I ignore.   After a while i can login to the  limited  HTML console, however the flash based vcenter does not load and give the following error:

503 Service Unavailable (Failed to connect to endpoint: [N7Vmacore4Http16LocalServiceSpecE:0x00007f406c0e7d40] _serverNamespace = /vsphere-client action = Allow _port = 9090)

Okay, got into the html5 ui  and navigated my way to console and rebooted the VC VM.  Waited 10 minutes and Now its working.  ITs running form shared NAS NFS.

Thanks for reading this. 

Now... should I just leave the VCenter  VM on the Shared NFS NAS ?  Should I copy it back to a 6.5 host?   Next to get it backedup regularly along with my other VM's.

Found this article.  File-Based Backup and Restore of vCenter Server Appliance

I may back it up and install an new instance and restore data to see if it works.

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loufeliz
Contributor
Contributor

I will be trying this today and will post back here.

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