Moving a managed ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another vCenter Server (1004775)

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Moving a managed ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another vCenter Server (1004775)

Purpose

This article provides instructions to move an ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another.

Considerations prior to migration:

Migrating ESX\ESXi hosts with distributed switches is not recommended. See these articles to migrate the host to standard switches prior to migrating them to a new vCenter Server:

Moving an ESX/ESXi host with vDS from one vCenter Server to another (1029498)

Exporting/importing/restoring Distributed Switch configs using vSphere Web client (2034602).

If you are migrating to a vSphere 6.0 environment be aware that VMFS-3 is deprecated. For more information, see Frequently Asked Questions on Deprecation and End of Support (EOS) for VMFS-3 in VMware vSphere 6.0.x (2093576).

The High Availability setting must be recreated on the new vCenter Server prior to host migration.

DRS must be set to manual or disabled prior to moving the ESX/ESXi host. DRS settings must be created on the destination vCenter Server. This also removes resource pools from the ESXi/ESX host. For more information, see Disabling VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) (1007655).

Important: If you are using VMware vCloud Director or VMware Horizon View, do not disable DRS. Configure DRS to manual to preserve the existing Resource Pools.

Storage DRS must be set to manual and the configuration duplicated on the destination vCenter Server. For more information on enabling and disabling storage DRS, see Enabling and disabling Storage DRS (SDRS) in the vSphere Web Client (2032910).

Resolution

To move an ESXi/ESX host from one vCenter Server to another, remove the host from the vCenter Server then add the host to a new vCenter Server. This operation does not affect the state of any virtual machines running on the ESXi/ESX as long as the prerequisites are met. The historical performance data of both the ESXi/ESX and its virtual machines however be purged.

Removing the ESXi/ESX host from the vCenter Server

To remove the ESXi/ESX host from vCenter Server:
Click Inventory in the navigation bar, expand the Inventory as needed, and click the appropriate managed host.

Right-click the managed host icon in the inventory panel and select Disconnect (wait for the task to complete).

Right-click the managed host icon in the Inventory panel and select Remove.

Click Yes to confirm that you want to remove the managed host and all its associated virtual machines.

Adding the ESXi/ESX host to a new vCenter Server

To add the ESXi/ESX host to a new vCenter Server:
Connect the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client to the new vCenter Server.

Click Inventory in the navigation bar.

Expand the Inventory as needed and click the appropriate datacenter or cluster.

Click File > New > Add Host.

In the first page of the Add Host wizard, enter the name or IP address of the managed host in the Host name field.

Enter the username and password for a user account that has administrative privileges on the selected managed host.

Click Next.