Consolidate 2 vCenter into 1-licensing question

[GaryKing123]

Hi guys,

Would appreciate your help on this. So basically we have 2 vcenter server on windows server. Let's call it vCenter1 and vCenter2. Both vCenter are running 6.0.

What we would like to do is have only single vCenter server to manage inventory and ESXi hosts from single vCenter server. After consolidation we should be able to manage all ESXi and VM's currently on vCenter1 from vCenter2. We don't want 2 vCenter servers and hence less servers to maintain and less footprint.

Technically from network aspect as we are not having and distributed switches and just standard switches it's pretty straightforward. Below KB explains how to disconnect and add.

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004775

From licensing aspect when I did do test run it asked me "the license key you have selected is part of another vCenter inventory..." with a warning. Not sure if I should say Use Key over here??

Also from technical side of things like update manager, SSO is there anything else that needs to happen?? We would like to decommission vCenter1 eventually.

thanks,

[rcporto]

Since you will decommission the old vCenter, just go ahead and select "Use Key". About the SSO, assuming both vCenter uses a dedicated SSO domain, you should not worry about... and same for the Update Manager, since each vCenter requires your own Update Manager instance.