Migrate vmnic and VMs to new VDS.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

In some cases it is required to create a new VDS and migrate all current connections to it. This article introduces how to perform this operation.

Resolution

Prerequisites

• More than 1 active vmnic connected to old VDS.

Steps

Please apply the changes host by host, not all at once.

1. Create a port group in new VDS.
2. Add host to new VDS following Add Hosts to a vSphere Distributed Switch. After that 2 VDSes should be seen at virtual switch page as below.
   
3. Visit network inventory, right click old VDS. Select "Distributed Port Group" >> "Manage Distributed Port Groups ...".
   
4. Select "Teaming and failover". Click "NEXT".
   
5. Select all port groups. 
6. We are going to transfer vmnic1 first. From step2 screenshot, the active vmnic during transfer would be vmnic2. Leave Uplink2(vmnic2) at Active uplinks, and move all other uplinks down to Standby uplinks. Click "NEXT" and then click "FINISH".
   
7. Verify that all traffic comes to vmnic2 by selecting vmk or vNIC adapter. It is expected that only Uplink2 is highlighted.
   
8. Click 3 dots menu of new VDS.
   
9. Select Uplink1 for vmnic1.
   
10. Change the destination port group of the vmks to transfer. Click "NEXT" until completing all steps in the wizard.
    
11. Visit network inventory, right click old VDS. Select "Migrate VMs to Another Network ..".
    
12. Select the new VDS port group created at step1.
    
13. Select VMs to transfer to this port group. Click "NEXT" until completing all steps in the wizard. 
    
14. Repeat step 11 to 13 if there are multiple port groups connected to VM.
15. Verify no vmk or vNIC connected to old VDS. It is expected to see no port group box on the left side of old VDS.
    
16. Repeat step 8 to 9 to transfer vmnic2 to new VDS.
17. Repeat all steps above for other hosts.