Migrate VMs from distributed to standard switch with Override VLANID policy

[GiovanniC]

Hello,

we need to move ESXi 4.1 hosts from Virtual center server 4.1 to virtual center server 5.5 with all VMs running on the host. I'd like to keep VMs running and connected to the network during the migration.

One of a requirements is to migrate VMs to standard virtual switch delete the distributed virtual switch. In our ESXi 4.1 environment, all VMs are connected to a single DVS, have multiple NICs with a specific VLANID each one (i.e. NIC1--> VLANID=1, NIC2 VLANID=2, NIC3 VLANID=3, etc) . The DVS is configured with the VLAN Override policy, so we can assign a specific VLANID for each NIC.

Since that on the standard virtual switch we cannot define the Override policy, We planning to create as many portgroups as the number of VLANID used in virtual distributed switch, and migrate VMs (one by one) from DVS to a specific portgroup (with a proper VLANID) on Standard virtual switch.

The problem is that the "Migration Virtual Machine Networking" wizard give only the option to move entire VM and there is not the possibility to select a single NIC and migrate it.

In this current configuration, if we migrate entire VM to specific portgroup, only one NIC will work properly but the others will be disconnect from the network because of a wrong VLANID. If I could select and migrate a single NIC, We will be able to move the VM NICs to specific portgorups with a proper VLANID defined without outage.

Does someone have any suggestions, how to move VMs (with multiple NICs defined in different VLANID) from distributed virtual switch to standard virtual switch?

or.......  maybe I'm a wrong in this scenario....

Thanks in advance

Best Regards

Giovanni

[Gav0]

For a small number of VM's you can just click 'Edit Settings' and change the port group manually for each nic, then click OK to apply the changes.

If you have a large number of VM's to migrate take a look at using PowerCLI.  You could use something like this for each port group/vlan:

get-datacenter "Name" | get-vm | get-networkadapter | where-object { $_.networkname -like "OldPortGroup" } | set-networkadapter -networkname "NewPortGroup" -Confirm:$false

Good Luck!

[GiovanniC]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

We are going to migrate NICs via PowerCLI, as you suggested,

Best Regards

Giovanni