Upgrade vCenter to a different host with new hostname

[DanielVaknin]

Hi,

We have a customer that would like to upgrade his vCenter 5.5 (no updates) to vCenter 6.0 U2.

He wants to Install the new version of vCenter on a new VM with a new hostname and IP address.

I know that if we were about to install the new version with the same hostname and IP address, I could just copy the DB files to the new SQL (local SQL on the vCenter server), copy the SSL directory, and install the vCenter while using the current database.

Can this be done with new hostname and IP? Is there something we need to take in account before/after the upgrade?

Thanks!

[BenLiebowitz]

Sounds like a great candidate to use the new vCenter Migration Tool to migrate from Windows vCenter 5.5 to the vCenter Appliance running 6.0 Update 2m.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/09/vcenter-server-migration-tool-vsphere-6-0-update-2m.html 

This tool will migrate all the data into the VCSA, transfer the IP, the CERT, everything.

[DanielVaknin]

I would be glad to do it, but the cusomer is using physical host for the vCenter and not a VM.

My mistake that I wrote "VM" in the original post..

[BenLiebowitz]

Ahhh... sorry, I would remind them that the Windows vCenter is going to go away and they'll need to migrate to the VCSA at some point. 

As for migrating to a new server... Is the DB local or external?  If it's external, it's just a matter of shutting down vCenter on the existing server, setting up the ODBC entries on the new server and installing vCenter.  vCenter will prompt you to upgrade the DB. 

[DanielVaknin]

Yes, they will have to migrate to VCSA at some point, but unfortunately that's not now...

Regarding the database, it is a local SQL installed on the vCenter host.

As for what you wrote, I've tried this in my lab environment, and the vCenter installation gave me an error, which, after some research, tells that vCenter can't be migrated and upgraded from version 5.x to version 6 at the same time.

What is possible is to install the same version of vCenter on the new server (and insntall SQL, and migrate the database from the old server to the new one, including ODBC), and then perform in-place upgrade on the new server.

I've already tried this and it's working.

The only thing I haven't tried yet, is to change the vCenter name and IP address while installing the same version of vCenter on the new server.

I'm afraid that it will cause issues with SSL or lookupservices/webservices addresses. And even maybe the connection between all ESXi hosts and the vCenter.

(When I didn't change the hostname and IP, I could just copy the SSL directory to the server and all hosts will remain connected after the "switch" and upgrade).

Can it be done the same?

[BenLiebowitz]

I've never tried a migration AND upgrade at the same time.  I was going to suggest a migration first and THEN an upgrade.  Moving to VCSA would solve that. 

Sorry, I've never done a migration like you're doing so I don't really have any advice here...   

[DanielVaknin]

OK, thanks for your help!

[JimBerry]

This is what I do because I am not a fan of upgrades from one version to the other.  There are migration scripts out there than can help you do this.  InventorySnapshot on the Flings website is one of the ones I use.  I have two large user environments (2000+ VMs each) with lots of folders with the same name so the first thing I do is run a PowerCLI script that renames all entities to its database name.  Then I run the InventorySnapshot utility to do the data dump and then the insert into the new vCenter.  After everything is in the new vCenter I run the rename script to put all the original names back.  There are always a few things to clean up by hand but I've been doing this for several upgrades now.  When you are done you have a new vCenter and a new database.  Of course, there is no history so if that is an issue this may not be the best thing for you.  For us, it is not an issue.  I like starting with a "fresh" setup every new version.