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FireIT
Contributor
Contributor

Move/Migrate Vcenter appliance from one set of hosts to a new set

I have an existing system on 4 ESXi hosts with a VNX storage system.  On this system is a 6.5 Vcenter appliance.  We just deployed 3 new SimpliVity hosts to this Vcenter appliance and now I need to move the Vcenter to the new SimpliVity hosts.  The SImpliVity hosts are not connected to the VNX storage system, they have their own storage.  How can I move the Vcenter appliance ?

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IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

4 Hosts indicates that you have ESXi standard or better..... so  as soon as you add your new ESXi Hosts to the existing vCenter you can use

1. Storage vMotion to migrate vCenter to the new Hosts as long as EVC Mode match

or

2. use the Clone feature of vCenter and create a Clone of the current VCSA. After that shutdown the original and start the "clone" on the new Host/Datastore. To reuse the the oringal VM name you should rename your existing vCenter to VCSA_OLD first and than start cloning.

or

3. Backup and Restore

Regards,

Joerg

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FireIT
Contributor
Contributor

When you say backup and restore?

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IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

Than i mean to use your VM Backup software and perform a restore of that particular VM into the new Host/Environment.

Regards,
Joerg

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Alex_Romeo
Leadership
Leadership

Hi,

Another solution could be to use Veeam "Quick Migration" which is a Veeam backup & Replication (free) feature:

Moving VMware VM from one host to another without vMotion https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/quick_migration_launch.html?ver=95u4

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ARomeo

Blog: https://www.aleadmin.it/
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Vijay2027
Expert
Expert

VAMI backup/restore is one option.

Backup : How to Backup And Restore VCSA 6.5 - The Ultimate Cheatsheet

You can use scp protocol and take back up on one of the ESXi host. (like: scp://<ESXi-IP/FQDN>/vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE/backup)

Power-off the source vCenter server appliance

Mount the same build iso and restore. You can choose destination host during the restore wizard.

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ChrisFD2
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I'm assuming there's IP connectivity?

You'll most likely have to upgrade the vCenter version as SimpliVity will be at 6.7 I'd have thought. So upgrade vCenter, then add the SimpliVity nodes, the vMotion but do a storage vMotion as well.

Regards,
Chris
VCIX-DCV 2023 | VCIX-NV 2023 | vExpert *** | CCNA R&S
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