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  • 1.  How to remove and re-add ESX hosts in Virtual Center?

    Posted Apr 18, 2008 05:34 PM

    Just a quick question (for those of you in the know). Also, let me say that I'm relatively new to VMware (so forgive my ignorance).

    I've been put in charge of a major re-IP addressing for our entire division (a mandate handed down from our corporate offices). We're moving from one subnet to another. I've got all of my physical servers done (save the two ESX 2.5.2 hosts running all of our virtual machines) and now I'm down to the virtual machines. I did change the addresses on the VM's on one of our ESX hosts once (also change the ESX address) , but couldn't communicate with any of the VM's once that was done, so we changed them back (I could ping to and from ESX host, but could only ping out from the VM's). During this change, we also noticed that we couldn't manage our ESX hosts from virtual center (once we changed the IP address). The ESX hosts were entered into VC by IP and not by DNS name. So now I've worked through most of the communication issues on the VM's, and my question is about VC and the ESX hosts. I read on the VMware site that you can remove the ESX hosts from VC and then re-add them. Has anyone done this, and, if so, can you share any details about it (i.e. how difficult was it, any special considerations before doing this, etc)? I simply want to remove the ESX hosts that are listed by IP address and then re-add them using the dns name instead (so an IP change won't be such a huge deal).

    Thanks for any help you can provide!



  • 2.  RE: How to remove and re-add ESX hosts in Virtual Center?

    Posted Apr 18, 2008 09:26 PM

    I have removed and readded hosts from VC many times without issue.

    When you add them back in, it will ask you where you want the virtual machines to be shown in the "Virtual machines and templates" view. - i.e. it won't retain their position, which is a bit of pain.

    If you're using a license server, I'd recommend you set your hosts to unlicensed before you change the ip address (which will return the license to the license server), and relicense after the change. I've found problems in the past where licences "get lost" if you don't do it this way.

    Also as DNS is critical, you want to make sure

    you can resolve your hosts by hostname, fully qualified name and reverse lookup.

    Good luck.

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  • 3.  RE: How to remove and re-add ESX hosts in Virtual Center?
    Best Answer

    Posted Apr 19, 2008 02:46 PM

    Having just reread your original post, I see you are using ESX 2.5.2 in which case you will using host based licensing, so won't be a problem.






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  • 4.  RE: How to remove and re-add ESX hosts in Virtual Center?

    Posted Apr 23, 2008 04:14 PM

    Chris,

    Thanks for the answer, it was exactly what I was looking for (I was a little worried about making this type of change...having never done something like that before).

    I was able to remove the hosts and then re-add them using their FQDN and everything is working fine!

    Thanks again for providing some insight on this.