About two years ago I have written a blog post describing how service provider (with cloud based on vCloud Director) can replace hardware without tenants actually noticing this. The provider can stand up new vSphere cluster with new hardware and migrate whole Provider VDC to it with running virtual machines. In my mind this is one of the distinguishing features from other cloud management systems.
Recently I had an opportunity to test this in large environment with vCloud Director 5.5 and would like to report how it is even more simplified compared to vCloud Director 5.1 which the former post was based on. No more API calls are needed and everything can be done from vCloud Administrator GUI in the following five steps:
- Prepare new cluster and create new provider VDC on it.
- Merge it with the old provider VDC. Disable its resource pool(s).
- Migrate all VMs from the old resource pool to the new one in vCloud Director (not in vSphere!!!)
- Redeploy all Edge Gateways running on the old hardware.
- Detach the old resource pool.
While the first 4 steps are identical as in vCloud Director 5.1 the step 5 is where the simplification is. The last step takes care of both migration of catalog templates and deletion of shadow VMs.
As before this is possible only with Elastic VDCs (Pay-As-You-Go or Elastic Allocation Pool).
Tom Fojta's Blog 
From your naming convention, it looks as though the source VDC ran Nexus 1000v and the destination is on vDS. Can you live migrate VMs between the two clusters and move VMs between Nexus and vDC at the same time?
You cannot vMotion between Nexus 1000V and vSphere distributed switches. That is not possible in vCloud Director nor in vSphere.
Are you aware of any changes in vCloud Director for SP 8.0. We are planning to replace our hardware.
No changes related to VDC migrations in 8.0/8.10.
Is it possible to merge a provider VDC with VCenter 5.5 and VCenter 6.0? The VCenter 5.5 is running with VShield Manager and VCenter 6.0 will run NSX Manager. Can we still achieve the similar result on migration?
No, PVDC is constrained by VC Datacenter object and cannot span multiple VCs.
I am unable to disable the old resource pool as it is labeled as the “Primary” resource pool. The only one I can disable is the new one i’ve merged. Ideas?
You need to merge the old with the new, not the other way.
If we have done in the other way, can it still disable the old and detach it
No. You cannot detach primary Resource Pool.
Is it possible to move just one VDC from one cluster to another?
Org VDC? Yes, if it is elastic with Migrate To action at VM level.
hi this fails for me at step 3 when attempting to migrate VMs. I get java.lang.runtimeexception
com.vmware.vcloud.activity.serialization.ExternalObjectSerializer$ActivityObjectSerializationErrorSentry@257bfb1
Using vCD 8.20
“The last step takes care of both migration of catalog templates and deletion of shadow VMs.”
How can we migrate all templates and media files of clients when we merging PVDC?
Thanks!
How did this work in 10.2? I can’t find the migrate option
You have to use API now or wait for next release that should have the feature back in UI.
how would you do this in 10.1?
Migrate VM is not yet available in the UI, but you can use API instead.
Is there more clarification for this action with API usage on 10.1
https://vdc-repo.vmware.com/vmwb-repository/dcr-public/06a3b3da-4c6d-4984-b795-5d64081a4b10/8e47d46b-cfa7-4c06-8b81-4f5548da3102/doc/doc/operations/POST-MigrateVm.html
If I want to migrate customer’s VMs and nsx-v network VMs in vcloud director from old to new hosts, wouldn’t it be OK to just put new hosts in the same vcenter cluster as old ones and then migrate VMs in vcenter (old hosts would be put in maintenance mode)? What problems can I expect by doing so? Thanks!
Yes, as long the hardware architecture (CPU, number of NICs) does not change.