Though, lot of articles and useful blogs in respect to vCenter update, I couldn’t get blogs states Physical vCenter (Embedded installation) update with migrate to virtual appliance in order to enable VCHA.
Scenario: We are running vCenter in a physical server-windows based with embedded (PSC and VC) installation which needs to be migrated to VCSA with considering VCHA feature enable.
Scope & Objective: To align our infrastructure with latest updates, vCenter components should be updated to latest version 6.5 (currently latest) and also we have to enable VCHA solution for vCenter failover.
vCenter Server : Physical Server / Windows 2012 / PSC and vCenter embedded installation with SQL external database.
The below plan explains the steps to migrate and separate vCenter server components.
- Add secondary PSC (appliance) to existing vCenter Server 6.0.
- Repoint current PSC (physical) to external. Output : PSC separated from physical vCenter Server 6.0
- Update PSC using vCenter update option
- Migrate vCenter using vCenter migration tool to obtain vCenter 6.5 appliance. Output : vCenter and PSC migrated to appliance with 6.5 version.
Advantages:
- No down time for user workloads.
- The physical Server will be automatically powered down during vCenter migration
- Since there is no change on vCenter (existing database), We can power on any time in the event of any steps failure or unforeseen issues.
ITOPS 