vCenter

Hi All

I've been trawling through the community reading a lot to get a handle on this so thought I might ask this question to get a concise answer.

I am being asked to upgrade a VCenter from 5.1 U2 to V6. there is no documentation of the prior VCenter install and there is no record of the SSO Master Password. I have reset the admin@system-domain password so i am able to get into the web console. As mentioned in other posts, this password is completely separate from the Master password, which cannot be changed without knowing what the Master password currently is.

From what I have read the easiest method for me to upgrade seems to be to remove and reinstall SSO then reconnect VCenter to it.

The seemingly harder method is to build a new VCenter, create local switches, as we use vDS, migrate the guests to the local switches on the current vcenter, migrate the hosts to the new VCenter and then recreate the vDS's.

I have looked at the flings in the labs.vmware.com site and there is one that could help, but it doesnt work for v5.1 to 6 and sounds like it has issues with vDS.

One option I have been thinking of and would like to validate is this: If I build a new VCenter with a new SSO install that is actually documented, can I join a V5.1 VCenter to a V6 SSO install? If so then technically I could upgrade the 5.1 vcenter to 6 and then as the old and the new are part of the same authentication domain, I could Vmotion between the VCenters. Is this a valid option or am I expecting the product to do more than what it actually can? I'm looking for the least disruptive method to get up to get them up to date

Thanks

Hayden

Thought I would reply to this and let everyone know how we progressed.

After much Googling and trial and error, I came across a blog by V(E)XPERTISE written by Fabian Lenz that helped me get this to work properly. I can now migrate my systems with vDS's intact to a new VSphere 6 VCenter install The link to the article is http://www.vxpertise.net/2013/06/migration-of-a-distributed-switch-to-a-new-vcenter-important-things-to-know/

Essentially the issue I had was I was using the logical order of importing the vDS's and not the correct order. This is a great help as it get us around the whole forgotten SSO 'master' password issue and allows us to essentially upgrade to a new VCenter install as we were wanting to do.

I hope this helps someone else out there

• Backup the vDS on the old vCenter
• Disconnect and remove all of the ESXi hosts on the old vCenter
• Connect all ESXi hosts to the new vCenter
• Restore the vDS on the new vCenter (preserve the original distributed switch and port group identifiers)