Hello all,
I have a messed up installation of vCenter I want to perform a complete re-install of vCenter non-disrutively and I think I can do it but would like to get some other opinions to be sure I am not missing something. I have a 3 host cluster with about 40 VMs that I would like to keep running throughout the entire process. The server is currently running an upgraded instance of vCenter 5.1 U1 but the upgrade did not go very well. The OS is Windows 2003 x64. I have no need to save any of the performance data in the database. I also need to upgrade my 3 ESXi hosts to 5.1 U1.
This is my plan...
- Disable HA on the cluster
- Move each host out of the cluster
- Remove each host from the vCenter inventory
- Rebuild the vCenter server with Windows Server 2008 R2 64bit
- Perform a clean install of vCenter 5.1 U1
- Add each host back to vCenter
- Rebuild the cluster to take advantage of vMotion
- vMotion guests off of 1 host
- Remove host from the cluster
- Install a clean copy of ESXi 5.1 U1
- Re-configure host & vSwitch
- Reconnect host to existing VMFS datastores - "Retain existing signature" Datastores are running on FC LUNs.
- Add host back into vCenter
- Repeat steps 8-13 for the 2 other hosts