Moving Hosts to New VC

[halemeister]

I have a site over a WAN that connects into my VC, due to a recent WAN outage they want their own VC on site. If I set one up for them, what is the best way to move the cluster and hosts to the new VC? Do I leave everything as is in the existing VC and setup the cluster in the new then connect the hosts? Will it automatically disconnect the hosts from the VC they are in now? Do I need to stop my VC service when doing this? Thanks for the input.

[weinstein5]

Moving a host to a new VC Server will not automatically remove it form the old host. These are the steps you should follow:

1. Set up the new VC Server and create the clusters

2. Disable the DRS and HA on the cluster in the old VC environment

3. Remove the hosts from the inventory of the old VC Environemnt (right click on the host and remove form inventory)

4. Add to the new VC Inevntory into the clusters

You do not need to stop the VC service -

[halemeister]

I removed HA and DRS from the cluster. Then I right clicked on the host and selected Remove. I get an error that the host has to be in maintainance mode to remove it....am i doing something wrong?

[Troy_Clavell]

you have to disconnect the host, before you remove it.

[gorto]

...... and I'm guessing there is no way to avoid (guest) downtime when removing the last host from the cluster?

I'm in the same situation, attempting to totally move to a new VC2.5 without guest outage - is it at all possible?

[halemeister]

I just successfully move all my hosts in my cluster to a new VC without downtime on my guests. First, I removed HA and DRS from the cluster. Then I disconnect the first host, once it is disconnected I was able to delete it. Once it was deleted, I added to the cluster in my new VC. I repeated for the rest of the hosts. Once I had all of the hosts in the new cluster in the new VC i turned on HA and DRS.

[gorto]

I'm still a little confused, forgive me - VC does not allow you to remove/delete a host until its in maintenance mode (no operating guests) - which is fare enough until you come to move the last hosts containing the operating guests - how are the operating guests moved onto the new VC since they have nowhere (host) to migrate to?

[weinstein5]

Only if it is part of an HA/DRS cluster will you be forced to place it into maintenance mode - if it is not par tof that you will be able to shut it down with oging into maintenance mode

[gorto]

My understanding exactly - to move all the hosts in an existing cluster to a new Virtual Centre some guest downtime is necessary. In summary:

IF NOT a cluster host THEN no guest downtime is necessary

IF a clustered host THEN maintenance mode necessary which (eventually) means guest downtime

[weinstein5]

you follow hailmeister's steps and there will be no down time -

[gorto]

Did I mention I was attempting to move from VC2.0.2 to VC2.5.x?

Surely, I would need a complete removal (uninstall of host Agents) rather than the more simple Disconnect ?

[weinstein5]

no you did not - I would not do a simple disconnect but remove form inventory which will remove the vc agent -

[gorto]

as I thought/feared - many thanks - and sorry for me confusing the picture