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Maxthon Chan
Asked: 2016-01-27 20:04:30 +0800 CST

How do I move vCenter Server Appliance to a vDS?

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I am trying to migrate both the only vCSA and the VMKernel interface in my ESXi host from a standard vSwitch to a vDS, and that gave me all kinds of mess. How to do that properly? Bear in mind that the host in question also have the virtual machine that performs as the router.

My intended setup:

The host:

                     [      ]- vmnic0 -+- LACP --- Switch 1 (managed)
Internet --- vmnic3 -[ Host ]- vmnic1 -+
                     [      ]- vmnic2 --- Switch 2 (unmanaged)

vSwitch0:

vmnic3 --[ vSwitch0 ]-- vRouter

vDS:

vmnic0 -+- LAG1 --[     ]-- vRouter
vmnic1 -+         [ vDS ]-- vCSA
         vmnic2 --[     ]-- vmk0 (management network)

vRouter (OS: Ubuntu Linux):

vSwitch0 --[ vRouter ]-- vDS

vCSA (and other VMs):

vDS --[ vCSA ]

Other physical computers are attached on Switch1 or Switch2. There is also another ESXi host.

networking

3 Answers

  1. Caveat:

    I don't think a distributed switch or LACP belong here. And this definitely doesn't sound like an environment with VMware Enterprise licensing...

    But use the network migration tool in VMware. This is fully-documented and a supported means of migrating virtual and physical adapters from Standard vSwitches to vDS.

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  2. I don't follow your question very well, but I will make a suggestion all the same.

    If VC looses network connection during a network reconfig, the change is automatically reverted (sometimes), even if it is only for a moment.

    I would suggest putting your VCSA onto a temporary second network (so you have two routes), this way you can stop using the primary net while you do the moving around.

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  3. I think you should migrate in two steps, first to a vDS without LACP and then enable LACP. The first step should be straight-forward: Create the vDS and port groups you need and set vmnic0 as the first uplink and migrate your vmknics and vCenter to the vDS. Then set vmnic1 as the second uplink for your vDS. Then migrate to LACP.

    I've stumbled on an interesting blog posting recently: Disabling vSphere vDS Network Rollback. Maybe this can help you, too.

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