Hi,
Of course it is an issue. I do think your operation is : moving ESXi hosts from one vCenter to another.
I think that, if migrating from 2008 R2 Express to 2008 Standard is that important for you, you may have to follow these steps :
- Prepare a new vCenter Server, connecting to your SQL 2008 Standard. If your currently using SSO 5.5, install this new SSO as a member of an existing site
- Migrate from vDS to vSwitch all your VMs and hosts, disconnect them all from the current vCenter
- Connect all your hosts to your new vCenter
- Configure all as it was previously
I don't think you will be able to restore a DB configured on 2008 R2 (even express) to 2008 standard.
Also, if you don't want to install a new VM for a new vCenter, you may try to create your new SQL DB with the vCenter DB creation script that are in the installation package and reconfiguring your ODBC connector to connect to the new SQL DB. But, you will still have to move your hosts to vSwitch, reconnect your hosts to this "new" vCenter and reconfigure all.
Hope it helps.
Ludovic