Migrating to a new vCenter Server and bringing the vDS intact?

[hennish]

Hi. We need to abandon the old (physical) vCenter Server and move everything to a new (virtual) one. It's currently on 5.0, but will be upgraded to 5.1 before the migration.

The problem is that all VMs (around 800 of them) are on vDS, and we don't want to do a cumbersome manual recreation of standard switches and manual migration of VMs/hosts from vDS->vSS->vDS.

In 5.1 there is a way to export/import vDS that should solve this problem, but in reality it doesn't seem to work (VMware KB: Cannot use the vDS Import function to migrate to new vCenter Server)

Are there any other clever (and not overly complicated and time consuming) ways to do the migration?

[weinstein5]

Are you replacing the database server as well? If not just point the new vCenter server the existing database - it is in th e database where the existing environment is stored -

[hennish]

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. That would be the best way to do it, but in this particular case I would like to start from a fresh database/config.

Speaking of which, are there any rational reasons to want to start from a fresh database/config, or am I just too used to the old "stuff gets degraded as time passes" paradigm from the Windows era?

[bleibold]

Hennish,

Realize this is a bit of an older post, but I am facing a similar situation.  I have a old 5.0 vCenter server that I want to move to a new VM running 5.5 U1, new OS (currently 2008 SP2 want to go to 2012 R2) and new DB version (currently SQL 2008, want to go to SQL 2012).  I have done the VDS->VSS->VDS before and it works, but was also wondering if moving the DB would be a better approach.  Want to make sure it is fully supported as well.  I have seen the VMware KB that suggests moving to the new server on the same version, in other words, move to the new VM on 5.0 with a backup/restore of the SQL DB and then upgrade to 5.5 in place once you are on the new VM.  That seems cumbersome as well.  I am generally of the old school of thought that starting fresh is a good thing to do at some point, but interested in what you ended up doing.

Thanks,

Bob

[hennish]

I did the multi-step migration/upgrade of Windows Server, SQL server and vCenter version, and although it was a real pain with a lot of unanticipated problems, I was happy with the result. Just do the changes one at a time, and you'll be fine.

Unless of course you think your current vCenter Server DB has some problems that you would like to get rid of. In that case I recommend you start fresh and move the hosts and VMs VDS->VSS->new vC->VDS.

Good luck!