cannot migrate from vswitch to distributed switch with only one physical NIC

Question

I am trying to migrate vmkernel management interface from vswitch0 to vDS on ESXi 5.1 as lots of documents on the internet are describing , but it keeps disconnecting me and reverting the changes back.

Any ideas on how to migrate to vDS when having only one physical uplink which is already attached to vswitch0?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I have had to do this exact same task with single NIC computers such as Intel NUCs and Apple Mac Minis that I have had running ESXi in a vSphere cluster.

The underlying problem is that as the vmKernel ports are moved, connectivity with the vCenter server is lost, and as a result, the configuration is rolled back to a last-known good. This rollback is what we want to temporarily disable.

Following the instructions here, you can disable rollback, which will allow the migration wizards in the Web client to complete successfully.

1. Browse to a vCenter Server in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
2. Click the Manage tab, and select Settings.
3. Select Advanced Settings and click Edit.
4. Select the config.vpxd.network.rollback key, and change the value to false. If the key is not present, you can add it and set the value to false.
5. Click OK.

After successfully migrating your infrastructure to use dvSwitches, don't forget to change this value back to true.

Answer 2

Please use this procudure

Migrating service console or VMkernel port from standard switches to VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (1010614) http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010614

Answer 3

The procedure above was not working, I was loosing connectivity with the VMs and I had to revert back to the default settings from console.

So I figured out that it worked only when I firstly entered all the hosts involved to maintenance mode and then back..

Answer 4

So, I had the same issue with this as well. My big issue was that the host that had the single network connection was also the host for the vCenter server, so this made it real tricky! This host did have an additional NIC that was not connected to anything, so I used this to help. I also am using the VCA (vCenter Appliance), so it took some finagling.

Here's what I did to get around this.

1. Initialized unused NIC as 192.168.1.1/24 using standard switch.
2. Created new NIC on vCenter VM, assigned it to the new switch I just created on the host.
3. Logged into VCA, created new NIC and assigned it to 192.168.1.2/24. - See Creating second NIC on VCA for instructions.
4. Edit /etc/hosts on VCA to make sure for the hostname of the host I am working with is in there listed at its IP address of 192.168.1.1.
5. Disconnected the host, and then reconnected it again. Make sure you are connecting to it via hostname, and not IP address - this is important to make sure the vCenter server starts using that 192.168.1 network to talk to the host.
6. Log into vCenter and NOW performed the NIC migration into the VDS. Since the vCenter server and host shared the other link, they never lost touch with each other and they completed the migration. (This will disconnect you, it's okay).
7. Log back into vCenter. Disconnect the host again, and then reconnect it. You will get the nasty warning about how it was using 192.168.1.2 before, and it will reconfigure stuff - that's okay, let it do it's thing.

Now, viola, Everything should be working great - time to clean up the unused stuff.

I hope this helps some folks.