Moving VMs between VCS 5.5 and VCSA 6

[jedijeff]

I have a particular 5.5  8-node cluster being managed by VCS 5.5 that I cannot migrate  to VCSA 6 with the appliance (long story). So I wish to basically just create a new vCenter with VCSA 6 and move the ESXi hosts to it. However I have some sticking points on why I dont think this will work and looking for suggestions.

1. This cluster is using a Distributed Switch. I can easily convert everything back to Standard Switches and move the the VMs network back to a Standard Switch through powershell. I am confident I can do that.

2. After I accomplished #1 I am unsure how to get the hosts/vms to the new vCenter. I cannot remove the host from Inventory because it it is not in maint mode. And of course I could put hosts in Maint mode and remove them from VCS and put into VCSA since the VDS is now gone. But eventually I will be left with few hosts with all the running VMs and Im trying to avoid taking any VMs down. I have not tried this, but can I Disconnect the host from VCS and then add to VCSA and keep the VMs running on the host?

Or of course if anyone else has any other ideas that I could accomplish this while keep all VMs running. Linked mode is not an option.

[rcporto · Accepted solution]

1. This cluster is using a Distributed Switch. I can easily convert everything back to Standard Switches and move the the VMs network back to a Standard Switch through powershell. I am confident I can do that.

To move hosts between vCenters when using vDS you will really need to move to standard switch before, see: Moving an ESX/ESXi host with vDS from one vCenter Server to another (1029498) | VMware KB

2. After I accomplished #1 I am unsure how to get the hosts/vms to the new vCenter. I cannot remove the host from Inventory because it it is not in maint mode. And of course I could put hosts in Maint mode and remove them from VCS and put into VCSA since the VDS is now gone. But eventually I will be left with few hosts with all the running VMs and Im trying to avoid taking any VMs down. I have not tried this, but can I Disconnect the host from VCS and then add to VCSA and keep the VMs running on the host?

To move a host that is part of a DRS cluster with virtual machines running, just disconnect the host form vCenter, then remove the host from inventory, see: Removing Host from DRS Cluster | IT Diversified

[jedijeff]

Thank you. Works great.