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

Products

VMware vCenter Server VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to move an ESX/ESXi host with vSphere Distributed Switch from one vCenter Server to another.

Considerations prior to migration:

The High Availability setting needs to be recreated on the new vCenter Server prior to host migration.
DRS needs to be set to manual or disabled prior to moving the ESX/ESXi host. DRS settings needs to 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).
Storage DRS needs to 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).

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Resolution

To move an ESX/ESXi host with vSphere Distributed Switch from one vCenter Server to another:

Back up the vSphere Distributed Switch configuration. For more information, see Exporting/importing/restoring Distributed Switch configs using vSphere Web client (2034602).
Create a Standard Switch for the virtual machine, VMkernel, and Service Console port group depending on the environment on the ESX host you are migrating.
Move the ESX host to the Standard Switch you created in Step 2 and disable vSphere Distributed Switch on the ESX host you are migrating. For more information, see Disabling vNetwork Distributed Switches (1010718).
Check if the vCenter Server cluster is configured with EVC or not. If the destination vCenter Server is configured with EVC, all virtual machines must be powered off while adding the host to new vCenter Server.
Remove the ESX host from the cluster and add it to the new vCenter Server.
Create distributed switches in the new vCenter Server.

Note: To import vSphere Distributed Switch configuration from the backup created in Step 1, see Exporting/importing/restoring Distributed Switch configs using vSphere Web Client (2034602).
Migrate the new host networking from Standard Switch to vSphere Distributed Switch. For more information, see Migrating Service Console and/or VMkernel port from Standard Switches to Distributed Switch (1010614) and Migrating virtual machines between vSwitch or PortGroups to vDS or dvPortgroups (1010612).