Posts Tagged ‘Migrate’

Part 27: HOW TO: Migrate VMware vCenter Server 7.0 in an enabled EVC VMware vSphere 7.0 Cluster of ESXi 7.0 hosts using “Andy’s Towers of Hanoi solution”

Sunday, September 29th, 2024

In this video, I will show you “Andy’s Towers of Hanoi solution to  Migrating VMware vCenter Server 7.0” – HOW TO: Migrate VMware vCenter Server 7.0 in an enabled EVC VMware vSphere 7.0 Cluster of ESXi 7.0 hosts.

This video builds and continues on the theme in this series  Part 22: HOW TO: Add VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 7.0 Hosts to VMware vSphere vCenter Server 7.0. and Part 25: HOW TO: Add a Synology NAS providing NFS Storge to VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 7.0.

The reason I call this the Andy’s Towers of Hanoi solution is that the Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle game, and a logical approach is required in a certain order to solve it. This is very similar to the puzzle or headache, when you have older and new CPU generation VMware vSphere Hypervisors Hosts (ESXi hosts), and vCenter Server is currently hosted on a new CPU host (with newer CPU), and you want to combine all these hosts in a Cluster using an EVC baseline.

Like the individual blocks of the Towers of Hanoi puzzle, represents a procedure or function in the process to migrate the vCenter Server.

In this tutorial and example in this Lab, this is complicated in the virtual machine vCenter Server 7.0 are also hosted on shared storage which is also hosted on the Dell PowerEdge R730, which we want to add to a Cluster of Dell PowerEdge R720. This example represents adding a new CPU generation host “Haswell” to older CPU generation hosts “Sandy Bridge” in the same Cluster.

In Summary

1. Storage vMotion all virtual machines from shared storage to local storage on the Dell PowerEdge R730.
2. Power off the virtual machine Synology NAS
3. Enable EVC “Sandy Bridge” Per VM EVC for Synology NAS.
4. Power on virtual machine Synology NAS.
5. Storage vMotion all virtual machines from local storage on the  Dell PowerEdge R730 to Shared storage on the Synology NAS.
6. Power off DNS virtual machine.
7. Cold Migrate to Cluster. Power on DNS virtual machine.
8. Power off vCenter Server 7.0 virtual machine.
9. Unregister from vCenter Server 7.0  host (Dell PowerEdge R730).
10. Register vCenter Server 7.0  on new host (Dell PowerEdge R720)/
11. Power on vCenter Server 7.0 on new host (Dell PowerEdge R720).
12. Login to vCenter Server 7.0.
13. Drag and Drop Dell Power Edge R730 into Cluster.
14. Done.

Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) Explained

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