Using Quick Migration on vCenter

[lchan6904]

Hello all. I am trying to migrate the vCenter (v6.5) to a new ESXi host. Both are using local storage and vMotion is not supported due to ESXi licensing issues. Veeam B&R is connected to the vCenter. Is doing quick migration supported in this case? Thanks in advance.

[Gostev]

Yes. In fact, Quick Migration was created for this specific use case

[lchan6904]

Thank you for the quick reply!

[Andreas Neufert]

Quick Migration will migrate the workload and switch over whenever ready the VM with a small downtime.
If you have specific Veeam licenses, you can use the VM Replication to replicate the data over time, create a failover group and use a Planned Failover feature to migrate everything at a maintenance window.

[lchan6904]

Hello again. So I tried to migrate the vCenter this evening and the job failed at the very end. I accepted all the defaults except not to delete the old server afterward. Please advise. Thank you.

[Mildur]

Advice:
Open a support case for that. Log analysis will be needed to find out the cause.

[lchan6904]

I have opened a case but I am afraid it might take a while before they will get to me since I am using a Community License. Instead of migration, would it be more feasible if I just clone the vCenter to the new ESXi host? If so, which feather in VB&R fits well with cloning?

[Mildur]

Ah, your trying to migrate the vcenter. I have misread that. I‘m sorry for that.

If you want to quick Migrate vcenter vm, your vbr server has to be configured with standalone hosts and not be connected „to the vcenter vm“.

If you do a quick migration, veeam has to communicate with the vcenter to shutdown the vm in the process.
I think, this can be your problem here. If your vcenter is offline, veeam cannot finalize the quick migration process.

[lchan6904]

That's what I figure and that's why I asked the initial question in the first place.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll see if I can make it work by adding the standalone hosts instead of going through vCenter.

[lchan6904]

The advice to connect standalone hosts was spot on! Thanks again Mildur!

[Mildur]

No problem, happy to help you out