Questions about migrating vCenter to a new server

[LouBranda]

I am planning a migration of vCenter 4.0 U3 to a new physical server.  I am also changing operating systems: Windows 2003 R2 SP2 to Windows 2008 R2.  I have found and begun to follow the knowledgebase article that guides through the process.  I have a few questions though...

I can find no guidance about the Operating System change... is there anything I need to be aware of?

Do I really have to backup and restore the ADAM database seperately since it is already backed up to a table in the VC database?  The reason I ask is that dsdbutil.exe gives me a syntax error when I attempt to run "ifm".  I have captured a backup of the ADAM database using Backup Exec but I'm not entirely convinced that a restoration of this database will be easy.

Does anyone see a problem with me stopping all the services, capturing the database and log as a flat file, and restoring them as flat files after vCenter has been installed?

We have HA and DRS configured currently.  If I choose to install fresh with no migration... what would I lose?

Thanks so much,

[rothb]

Hello Lou,

we migrated vCenter from 4.0 U2 on Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 x86 (VM) to vCenter 4.1 on Windows Server 2008 R2 (VM). The Database, a MS SQL Server 2005 SP4 was on the same Machine as vCenter 4.0 U2 and we wanted to migrate only the vCenter Server to 2008 R2. We snapshoted the old Server and then began to migrate with the help of the Data Migration Tool from VMware. We haven´t backed up and restored the ADAM Database, maybe the Data Migration Tool did that for us?

If you install vCenter from scratch than you loose, among other things, your custom defined Alarms, custom Permissions, Resource Pools, VM Folders, Performance Data and if you utilize virtual Distributed Switches for Networking you will also have (a lot?) work restoring the VDS or getting them in the new vcenter. Especially the VDS point would be a show stopper for us. But maybe there is a KB Article out there which describes the import from the old vds config to the new vCenter without to much hassle.

The HA and DRS settings are easy to restore manually, if you haven´t gone wild and configured a lot of DRS and HA rules. Simply take Screenshots of the Cluster Settings.

Whish you all the best for your upgrade/migration.

Best Regards,

Bjoern

[LouBranda]

Thanks Bjoern.  The ADAM database is taken care of through the backup and restore of the database (and the install of vCenter).  Aprreciate the response Bjoern.

[jfmartin]

SO if I get your answer, doing a backup and a restore of thr SQL DB (where there is a backup of the ADAM DB in a table) the process of migrating the ADAM DB isn't required? Why then VMware mention this in they KB article for migration vCenter Server to another server? Weird.

[fabro]

Hi LouBranda,

I made myself the same question some days ago... The article for moving the database in vCenter 4.1 specifies that you need to migrate the ADAM database with your VCDB (It's supossed to be on the same server).

Anyway, I jumped this step and I didn't have any problem. It's true that is specified in a KB but I couldn't reproduce that step neither.

Regards,

Fabro.