VM Migration Cross vCenters

[xViniciusMedina]

Hi Guys, just a quick question because I don't have the enough lab to perform all the tests but,

Can I use the feature "Cross vCenter Server export" vCenter 6.7x -> vCenter 7.0x ?
Can I do a vCenter linked mode using the vCenter 6.7x & vCenter 7.0x to perform vMotion between then ?

Just to explain a little bit better, I'm looking for the best way to migrate VMs in different vCenters, clusters so on.

[rguhr · Accepted solution]

You can migrate VMs across different vCenters.
Use the same L2 vMotion (online migration) and/or provision (offline migration) segments or ensure a working layer 3 routing connection between different networks.

You don't need Enhanced Linked Mode for this (vCenters must be same version for ELM anyway).

[markey165 · Accepted solution]

@xViniciusMedina - We upgraded from 6.7 to a new 7.0 cluster fairly recently with zero downtime! The feature you need is Advanced Cross vCenter vMotion. It used to be a VMware fling, but it was productized in vCenter 7.01. I have written a blog post about it here:

https://www.virt-ed.com/post/advanced-cross-vcenter-vmotion

Once you have built your vSphere 7 Cluster, and its all tested and ready to go, from the new vCenter you can use the new Import VMs feature to pull the VMs across from 6.7 to 7.0. As long as you have the same networking at both ends, its very easy. We migrated over 400 VMs from 6.7 to 7.0 (and across different SSO domains) with no downtime.

HTH 😊