In anticipation of the end of mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 R2, I want to migrate a vCenter installation to a whole new server and MS SQL server.
It's a VM running in my host cluster. It has vCenter Server, Update Manager, Converter Standalone, and a few non-VMware services that I can handle myself. ADAM is installed as part of the vCenter Server requirements, and it's also joined to an AD domain where I'm using AD single sign-on.
The host cluster is four ESXi 5.1 hosts that are up to date, and have HA and DRS enabled. They also use distributed switches for all of their network connectivity including Management, vMotion, Fault Tolerance (though I'm not using FT) and for VMs.
I've done in-place upgrades to vCenter before, and I've replaced SQL Express with SQL Standard on the same server, but I haven't moved vCenter before. I'd be doing quite a few drastic steps, that I believe include:
* Full backups (of course) of SQL, the server itself, and ADAM
* Installing a new server OS and SQL 2012
* Detaching databases and reattaching them to the new server
* Restoring ADAM to the new server
* Installing vCenter, Update Manager, etc
* Hoping the host cluster attaches to the new server, and that nothing breaks
I'm not all that worried about preserving statistics, so maybe it's possible to install a new vCenter Server and just move the host cluster from the old server to the new one. I've moved hosts from one vCenter to another, but that was before I set up distributed switching.
--