How to move an NSX Manager appliance from one vCenter to another

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

How to migrate or relocate an NSX Manager appliance from one vCenter to another.

Environment

• VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.x
• VMware NSX 4.x

Resolution

Please be aware that at all times the managers have minimum requirements outlined in Cluster Requirements.

The crucial minimum requirement being a Maximum latency between NSX appliances of 10ms.

Migrating NSX Managers deployed from OVF:
The first NSX Manager appliance is initially deployed from OVF.
Appliances deployed from OVF are not managed by NSX.
These appliances can be vmotion or storage vMotioned to the other vCenter.
If the Manager is to be located on an NSX prepared host, ensure to add the Manager VM to the DFW exclusion list.

Migrating NSX Managers deployed from NSX UI:
NSX Managers deployed from the NSX UI are managed by NSX.
They must be redeployed to the new vCenter and should not be vMotioned or storage vMotioned or redeployed to the existing vCenter via OVF.

If the new vCenter can be added as a Compute Manager to NSX:
1) On NSX UI, go to System->Appliance select the Manager, Actions -> Delete. (Delete option is greyed out if the Managed was deployed from OVF.)
2) From System->Appliance, click Add NSX Appliance and deploy the appliance with the same settings to the new Compute Manager.

If the new vCenter cannot be added as a Compute Manager:
1) On NSX UI, go to System->Appliance select the Manager, Actions -> Delete. (Delete option is greyed out if the Managed was deployed from OVF.)
2) On the vSphere client of the new vCenter, deploy the Manager from OVF with the same settings as before.
3) Connect to one of the remaining Managers and get the thumbprint
   get certificate api thumbprint
4) ssh as admin to the newly deployed Manager and join it to the cluster
   join management-plane <cluster-vip> username admin password <admin password> thumbprint <cluster-thumbprint>

Additional Information

For more information regarding migrating NSX appliances (including Edge nodes) refer to How to migrate NSX-T to a new vCenter.

NSX Manager Installation Requirements

Example OVF deployment - Install Guide