I have a particular 5.5 8-node cluster being managed by VCS 5.5 that I cannot migrate to VCSA 6 with the appliance (long story). So I wish to basically just create a new vCenter with VCSA 6 and move the ESXi hosts to it. However I have some sticking points on why I dont think this will work and looking for suggestions.
1. This cluster is using a Distributed Switch. I can easily convert everything back to Standard Switches and move the the VMs network back to a Standard Switch through powershell. I am confident I can do that.
2. After I accomplished #1 I am unsure how to get the hosts/vms to the new vCenter. I cannot remove the host from Inventory because it it is not in maint mode. And of course I could put hosts in Maint mode and remove them from VCS and put into VCSA since the VDS is now gone. But eventually I will be left with few hosts with all the running VMs and Im trying to avoid taking any VMs down. I have not tried this, but can I Disconnect the host from VCS and then add to VCSA and keep the VMs running on the host?
Or of course if anyone else has any other ideas that I could accomplish this while keep all VMs running. Linked mode is not an option.