It’s not unusual for vCenter administrators to retire a vCenter rather than upgrade it. When doing so, the typical action is to stand up the new vCenter and move the hosts between them. However, doing so can cause issues with vCommander®’s discovery of the identity of VMs if not handled correctly.
Important: An ESX host should not exist in multiple vCenters that are being managed by vCommander at the same time.
When going through this kind of exercise, you can either:
- remove the ESX host from one vCenter and then add it to the other. This is the correct option if you require both vCenters to be managed by vCommander simultaneously.
- remove the vCenter you are retiring from vCommander before connecting to the new vCenter with vCommander. This is the correct option if you require the hosts to exist for both vCenters simultaneously.
When you remove a cloud account (managed system), you are not deleting files or records of any VMs, hosts, datacenters, clusters or resource pools. However the following are deleted and are not automatically restored when the cloud account (managed system) or its replacement is added back into vCommander:
- Policies Targeting the Cloud Account (Managed System)
Choose a new temporary targets for the policies, and disable the policy prior to removing the cloud account (managed system). Once the change to cloud account (managed system) is complete, synchronize inventory and choose new permanent targets. - Deployment Destinations Targeting the Cloud Account (Managed System)
You will have to recreate any deployment destinations. - Console Credentials
You will have to recreate this configuration as it applies to the managed system. - Guest OS Scan Configurations for VMs on the Cloud Account (Managed System)
You will have to update or recreate on the new cloud account (managed system). - Location Filters in Report Templates
If you have saved report templates with a filter targeting a cloud account (managed system) and that cloud account (managed system) is removed, the filter will be set to “Unknown” - Network Fencing Address Reservation
Network fencing addresses will be maintained, but IP addresses assigned via IP pools show as unassigned in the pool. To resolve, you must manually mark each IP used by the fences as Assigned in the IP pool.
The following are preserved when you remove a cloud account (managed system):
- Scheduled Tasks
Before removing a cloud account (managed system), disabled any scheduled tasks that target it. - Saved Searches
Before removing a cloud account (managed system), edit or delete any saved searches that target it. - Service Catalog Entries
Before removing a cloud account (managed system), edit or delete any Service Catalog entries that include components from the cloud account (managed system). - VM Fingerprints
The identity of VMs will be maintained providing the datastore and config files are unchanged. - VM Metadata
Ownership and attributes will persist providing the VM fingerprint is intact.