At VMworld this year, I had received several questions from customers asking whether it was possible to move an ESXi host configured using LACP/LAG from one vCenter Server to another, similar to the workflows outlined here or here. Not having spent much time with LACP/LAG, I reached out to a fellow colleague who I knew would know the answer, Anothony Burke, who you may know as one of the co-creators of the popular Automation tool PowerNSX.

Anthony not only verified that there was indeed a workflow for this scenario, but he was also kind enough to test and verify this in his lab. Below is the procedure that he had shared with me and I merely "prettified" the graphics he initially drafted up 🙂

At a high level, the workflow is similar to the ones shared earlier. The main difference is that for an LACP/LAG-based configuration, you must convert from VDS to VSS and then disconnect from one vCenter Server to the other, you can not simply disconnect and "swing" the ESXi host like you could for non-LACP/LAG configuration or you will run into issues. Once you have re-added the ESXi host to the new vCenter Server, you simply reverse the procedure from VSS to VDS and re-create your LACP/LAG configuration.

Step 1 - Here is an example of a starting point, where we have an ESXi host with 2 pNICs (vmnic0 and vmnic1) connected to an LACP bundle which is then associated with a physical switch.





Step 2 - Move vmnic1 from LACP/LAG configuration and then create a new VSS which it is associated with. To allow existing connections to drain gracefully, place the pNIC into standby rather than just removing it which will simply terminate all existing flows.



Step 3 - Now, that we have a pNIC on both the VDS and VSS, we can now migrate all VMkernel and VM Networking interfaces from the VDS over to the VSS.



Step 4 - Once you have completed all VMK and VM Networking migrations, you can now remove vmnic0 from VDS and associate that to the VSS.



Step 5 - At this point, you can now safely disconnect the ESXi hosts from the current vCenter Server and add that to the new vCenter Server

Step 6 - Now, we just simply perform the reverse set of steps from 2-4, by going from VSS to VDS and re-creating our LACP bundle on the new vCenter Server.