Moving a virtualised vCenter

[greatbrit]

Just after a quick bit of guidance, moving to vCenter 4.1 decided to virtualise as new 2008 R2 64-bit server, all works great except now I need to make changes to the host I put it on and the CPU IDs don't match elsewhere to allow me to vMotion to another host. I assume best idea would be to bring the server down and remove it from its current host and then add to another host? After that I plan to put the hosts in clusters so I don't have this problem again!

[marcelo_soares · Accepted solution]

Yes.... you will need to do this way as you will loose vmotion and migrate operations during the vCenter downtime.

Try enabling EVC on the cluster before this...

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310/410

Virtualization Tech Master

Globant Argentina

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[greatbrit]

The host isn't currently part of a cluster and I can't move it to a cluster while it's VMs (including vCenter) are powered on, very annoying!

[marcelo_soares]

Try this: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013111

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310/410

Virtualization Tech Master

Globant Argentina

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[mark_chuman]

For the reasons you mentioned you obviously also want to not have virtual VCs manage themselves (hosting clusters) if you are in a "linked mode" environment.

[greatbrit]

Well the setup was basically 4 hosts all doing different things, I wanted to look at using vMotion as we have vSphere Advacned but it transpired quickly that not all the processors had the same CPU IDs and the reccomendation seemed to be to enabled EVC at cluster level so I've now set up a server cluster and a VDI cluster both with two hosts each. As we have View for our VDI solution I can use HA and DRS on the VDI cluster and at least have some HA on the server cluster.

For now I've put the vCenter server in the VDI cluster so it gets the best management features -what is best practice for locating a virtualised vCenter server really?

[mark_chuman]

I don't treat the VC VM much differently, ie changing VM shell config settings..., the only best practices I follow are to not allow linked vCenter VMs to reside in a cluster they manage. Also, you want to pay attention to %RDY in ESXTOP with your vCenter VM. %RDY over 20-30 and you may start to see performance issues. I started seeing performance issues right above 30 %RDY in ESXTOP.