What will be lost if I perform a fresh install of vCenter Server ?

[TonyJK]

Hi,

We have attempted to upgrade our existing vCenter Server 4 to 5 without success.  The VC Server service is not able to start up.

VMWare support staff has suggested us to perform a fresh install.  We would like to know what information will be lost and has to be reconfigured in the new vCenter Server ?  We are OK for not keeping pervious Performance data.

Thanks

[vmroyale]

Hello.

If you have a smaller environment, it isn't too bad. I had to do this for a site with 4 hosts, and the permissions were lost - this was the most difficult thing I encountered. There are scripts out there that can export the permissions. Performance data, customization specifications and licensing were the other things that were "lost," if I recall correctly.

Good Luck!

[logiboy123]

You will lose:

1) Host profiles - can be exported and imported to new environment

2) Templates - can be exported and imported to new environment

3) Network configurations - must be rebuilt

4) Resource pools - must be rebuilt

5) Permissions - must be rebuilt

Regards,

Paul

[TonyJK]

Does it mean that I should remove those template from inventory (vCenter Server 4) before I perform a fresh install ?

After installing vCenter 5, I browse the datastore and add to inventory ?

Thanks again

[logiboy123]

You shouldn't need to. Once the new vCenter is up and running and can see your templates datastore simply browse the datastore and attach the VM.

[Dracolith · Accepted solution]

What you will lose depends on what you have in vCenter.

Templates, Folders, Cluster configurations, HA/DRS configurations, Alarm settings, cluster resource pools,

datastore clusters, storage profiles, host profiles, event history, 

If you use vNetwork distributed switch,

vCenter Distributed switch configurations will not exist in the new installation and

need to be rebuilt  before re-adding hosts;   you will probably need to convert those back

to standard vSS on the hosts temporarily before adding them to the new vCenter..

Basically... you lose all configuration except the configuration that is stored locally on the hosts.

That is, basically the list of VMs and the stuff you see in the 'configuration' tab when you click on

a host.

You will need to re-add the hosts  as one of the steps in installing the new vC.

You will have the VMs registered on the host, and any resource pools that existed

on the host at the time vC was lost.

However, when you move the hosts into a new cluster, the 'host resource pools'

will be removed.