Changing vCenter for ESX discovered in ViPR

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant ViPR Controller he would like to discover the vCenter 6 on Controller and then migrate ESX already discovered from vCenter 5.5 to 6, but I do not know if this can be disruptive for volumes already provisioned via ViPR Controller....

Hello Andrea,

If I understand this correctly, the customer is moving a few ESX servers from a VCenter 5.5 to a VCenter 6 which is not yet discovered ?

As the VCenter6 server is not yet added to the discovery, ViPR SRM will not discover the ESX servers that were moved, however previously collected data will remain in the database with the 'vstatus' property in inactive state.

Once the VCenter 6 server is added to the discovery the data will be collected from the servers that were moved.

Hope this answers your question.

Regards

Vaishak

My bad, ignore my previous response. I thought it was for ViPR SRM

Hi Andrea,

ViPR Controller does not have catalog service for moving host from Vcenter to Vcenter. I would suggest to discover the new vcenter into ViPR Controller. Then migrate the hosts from one Vcenter to another.

During this process, I am not sure if it would, But if controller does bring up a notification asking to approve or decline. I would want to decline the notification. This depends on the Vcenter Scan interval.

Here since this is just a Vcenter activity and the WWN's hosts and HBA's remain same, No changes would be required in ViPR Controller and everything should be online without any disruption.

Please update after the activity.

Thanks a lot! So we can try to discover the new vCenter and then migrate only one ESX, putting in in maintenance mode before moving it...correct?

Then, in your opinion, the notification will be brought up when ViPR sees the ESX removing from the old vCenter, right?

I'll update the discussion for sure!

Thanks Sathya....due doubts: 1. have the Cluster group created on new vCenter to be named as the one in the old vCenter? The Export Group in ViPR is named as the Cluster....and 2. I suppose that if I discover a new vCenter witha  new Cluster, even if named as the old one, the URN will be different...does this affect the Export Group?

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

1) Yes, the new Vcenter has to be first discovered into the ViPR Controller.

2) If it is a cluster, First you will need to create a cluster group in the new Vcenter and then add all the ESXi hosts of that cluster into this new cluster group in new Vcenter one by one. This is a Vcenter procedure to move hosts or cluster from one Vcenter to another.

3) By Default the Vcenter discover is every 24 hours. So, if your activity is not during that scan time or you don't perform a manual Vcenter scan, There will be no notification.

4) Once you have moved all hosts and made sure that everything is fine, you can perform a discover of both the Vcenters manually. If it shows notifications, just Decline.

Hi Andrea,

The cluster name can be the same in new Vcenter. I don't think the URN's are going to change for the hosts. But, yes the Vcenter URN's will be different. startinng 3.5 the stale exportgroups will automatically get deleted. If you get a notification to approve or decline, you will need to decline. One last step would be to run ViPR Cli command "viprcli cluster update" after a manual rediscovery of the Vcenters after the activity.  There has also been a recent Issue related to this and I would suggest reviewing that once.

https://emcservice--c.na55.visual.force.com/apex/KB_BreakFix_clone?id=kA2f1000000L40x

ViPR Controller: Migration of ESX cluster from one vCenter to another fails

Article Number 000501286

Thanks,

Sathya

Thanks for you update Sathya, I'll try to create a procedure and let you know!

One last question...if I take a ViPR backup before the activity, and we will have problems during the moving, could we reconnect the host back to the old vCenter a do a restore to the last backup of ViPR?

Hi Andrea,

You can do it in two ways.. Like you mentioned, yes.. you can take a backup and restore to the same vcenter. But I would suggest deleting the exportgroup and removing the volumes in ViPR "inventory only" and doing a discovery and re-ingestion of only that host cluster would be a better Idea and easy too with search filter and deleting all volumes from Inventory at one click.

Hope there is no issues and don't need to revert .

Just a write up to help you :

1) New Vcenter has to be first discovered into the ViPR Controller.

2) If it is a cluster, First you will need to create a cluster group in the new Vcenter and then add all the ESXi hosts of that cluster into this new cluster group in new Vcenter one by one. This is a Vcenter procedure to move hosts or cluster from one Vcenter to another.

3) By Default the Vcenter discovery is every 24 hours. So, if your activity is not during that scan time or you don't perform a manual Vcenter scan, There will be no notification. decline notification if any.

4) Once you have moved all hosts and made sure that everything is fine, you can perform a discover of both the Vcenters manually. If it shows notifications, just Decline.

5) Run ViPR cli command "viprcli cluster update".

6) Test provisioning a new lun to that cluster from ViPR catalog service to make sure that everything is fine.

Please update after your activity... Will help everyone.. Thanks !