Scenario:
I have 4 separate vCenters. Each has only a couple clusters of 10 ESXi 6.0u3 hosts. Each vCenter has a couple of Distributed switches (VM Guest & vMotion) and they are all setup differently. I want to consolidate the clusters from vCenters B, C, and D to vCenter A.
Here is the part I am trying to figure out. The VM guest vDS setup on vCenter A is using ports 20 through 60 across 4 port groups. VM guest vDS on vCenter B, and C, and D are also using ports 20 through 60 in their port groups.
I exporting the vDS config from vCenter B and importing it into the vCenter A telling it to preserve everything. I did a quick look at the port groups in the VM guest vDS and I noticed they had been give 61 through 101. I then created the cluster and connected the first host from vCenter B to vCenter A. At this point the VMs on the host are still running, but the ESXi host is not connected to the vDS I imported. I go in through the webclient and reconnect the host back VM guest vDS I imported. The VMs immediately lose connectivity to networking (The VM NIC shows Invalid backing). I am thinking this is because the VMs are looking for ports in the 20 through 60 range and the vDS was assigned port numbers 61 through 101.
I theory is VMs are not reconnecting back to the port groups because they cant find the port number they were using on the other vCenter?
I have read some articles out there that say I should connect all the ESXi hosts to the new vCenter then import the vDS. I assume I would run into the same issue. The imported vDS will grab up the next set of ports in the range and I will be back to square one. The VMs will disconnect from the network because the port numbers don't match up.
Am I missing something or am I up the creek without a paddle and will have to migrate hundreds of VMs over to the port groups using the webclient migration tool?
NOTE: Most of the VMs in my environment have multiple NICs for Prod network, Enterprise backup and restore, and NAS. This would be a very tedious process.
