Service Operations Insight

  • 1.  Connecting DM to a new vCenter which was migrated from an existing one

    Posted May 22, 2017 12:23 PM

    Hi Guys

     

    In our VMware environement, we have a vCenter which im connected to from DM. The guys supporting that vCenter are saying that they are having issues trying to upgrade the vCenter and resorted to creating a new vCenter with a new hostname and IP and then migrate all the ESX hosts and VM’s cluster etc. to the new vCenter.

     

    My question is, if im connecting to the new vCenter, how will that affect my data in the DB now that we have the same if not more VM’s, host clusters etc. but a different vCenter Name?

     

    Regards

    David



  • 2.  Re: Connecting DM to a new vCenter which was migrated from an existing one

    Posted May 23, 2017 09:58 AM

    The new VCenter may not show up in any of your data.  Except if it is a VMGuest, then you will see the original VMGuest stop showing new performance data and the new VMGuest with performance data.

     

    Vcenter name doesn't really get loaded into the performance data... only the ESX Host and VMGuests.

     

    When the new ESX hosts are built, if the name is the same then you will see a "Configuration Change" showing the ESX host upgraded to new hardware.

     

    If the name changes then the old one will remain, but no new Performance data will be collected for it.

    The VMs migrated to new ESX hosts will show up as a MOVE from the old Physical_Host to the new Physical_host.

     

    DataManager will handle it without any problem.

     

    David



  • 3.  Re: Connecting DM to a new vCenter which was migrated from an existing one

    Posted May 23, 2017 11:40 AM

    Hi David

     

    The snip below shows the name of the vCenters that im pulling data from. This is shown under VMware groups.  I believe once I start pullling data from the new vCenter it will then appear there as well.

    The only change that is happening is that there will be a new vCenter/VMware Manager. All the ESX hosts VMs/Guests will still be the same. Going forward we might not need to even connect to the old ESX host. Im not sure if these 2 vCenter servers are currently VM's or Physical servers.

     

    Regards

    David



  • 4.  Re: Connecting DM to a new vCenter which was migrated from an existing one

    Posted May 23, 2017 12:53 PM

    David T,

        Good news is that what you are seeing is just a Group, it is not a real object in the DB with a configuration.

    So I believe it will still work out. 

    Those groups may be rebuilt the first time you pull in data from the new VCenter.

     

    If not you can delete the bad groups and they should rebuild correctly overnight.

     

    BTW: Deleting a Group, does nothing to the ESX Hosts and VM Guests inside the group.  Groups are just entries in a table that link a group name to Entities.   Entities have configurations and performance metrics.  Groups have only pointers to other objects.

     

    David



  • 5.  Re: Connecting DM to a new vCenter which was migrated from an existing one

    Posted May 24, 2017 04:30 PM

    Hi David

     

    Thanks, that good to know. Should I rather wait for everything to be migrated before pulling data from the new vCenter?

     

    Would a DB backup be necessary before pulling and migrating the data from the newly connected data source just in case the DB goes fuzzy?

     

    Regards

    David