Migrating virtual machines between vSwitch or PortGroups to vDS or dvPortgroups

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps for migrating virtual machines from vSwitch Portgroups to vNetwork Distributed Switch dvPortgroups.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Resolution

vCenter Server introduces a new feature that allows you to mass-move virtual machines from one dvPortgroup to another.

 

To initiate a migration in VMware vSphere 7.0 , see Migrating from Standard to Distributed vSwitch
 

Execute the above procedure with the following order:

1. Create a Distributed Switch with at least as many Uplink Ports as physical NICs connected to the vSwitch.
2. In the Distributed Switch, create as many Portgroups as you already have in the vSwitch.
3. Assign uplinks to each Portgroup in the dvSwitch.
4. Break each teaming and transfer NIC or NIC(s) from each vSwitch to a corresponding uplink group in dvSwitch.
5. Migrate the Virtual Adapters and the virtual machines to the appropriate Portgroups.
6. Transfer the remaining uplinks to the uplink groups associated with the appropriate Portgroups.
7. Remove the vSwitches and their Portgroups.

Note: If the virtual machine contains virtual machine snapshots at the time of the networking migration, the networking is migrated, but the legacy portgroups continue to remain. To clear these legacy portgroups, you must delete all snapshots on the virtual machines, which automatically removes the legacy portgroups. For more information on deleting snapshots, see Consolidating/Committing snapshots in VMware ESXi.

 

Note: If the virtual machine you need to migrate to the vDS is the vCenter server itself then you should not use this feature. To migrate a vCenter server to the vDS:

1. Right click on the vCenter virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
2. Click on the network adapter and change the portgroup for the network adapter to one of the portgroups located on the vDS.

Using Migrate VMs to Another Network option can cause a virtual machine to briefly be disconnected from the network. This brief network disconnect may result in the vCenter server not being able to complete its own transition to the vDS.

Additional Information

For more information on vSphere 7.0 Networking , see About vSphere Networking.

For information regarding the migration of Service Console or VMkernel ports, including management VMkernel ports, see How to migrate service console / VMkernel port from standard switches to VMware vSphere Distributed Switch.