vCenter server converge PSC from external to embedded

/ August 23, 2019/ VMware, vSphere

Starting with vSphere 6.7, VMware announced that the external PSC will be deprecated at further releases. Reason for that is to avoid complexity with extra nodes or load balancers. The underlying reason is that with vSphere version 6.5 u2, VMware introduced the enhanced linked mode supported for embedded PSC deployments. So from that point embedded deployments can now use all the benefits of a external PSC without the complexity.

An other big advantage is that while using vCenter Ha, there is no need to make complex configurations and load balancing settings to make it work.

While doing the installation or upgrade from 6.5 to 6.7 the following error will be appearing within the vCenter Server Appliance Installer;

*The above screenshot has been taken while doing a clean install of a vCenter or PSC. You will only get an error while doing a upgrade on an external PSC obesely 😉

After updating the external PSC and vCenter server in my lab environment to version 6.7 u3. I decided to convert my external deployment model to embedded for saving resources and to be prepared for the future.

Starting at vSphere version 6.7 u2, you can use the web interface to converge the controller to embedded.

Let see how we can convert the system 😉

• Before doing the converge, check the overall node healths to avoid problems during the action
• Make a backup of the vCenter/psc configuration or/and make a snapshot of the virtual machines
• While doing the converge, the vCenter server will perform a reboot. make sure that other connected services like Horizon, Citrix, monitoring etc.. has been paused for doing actions or checks
  

In my case there are no replication partners. If you have a multiple vCenters servers in enhanced linked mode you can select the other one as a new replication partner.

During the converge, monitor the log file on the vCenter appliance /var/log/vmware/converge/converge.log.

After the cpu utilization has been dropped, the vCenter server is up and running without any problems at this moment….

Decomission PSC

After doing the converge, we can now decommissioning the old platform service controller.

There are a certain points of attention;

• After each decommissioning the vCenter server require a restart of the vCenter services
• In case the PSC is windows based, you must manually power-down the virtual machine. Because my PSC is an appliance the shutdown action will be performed by an API

Let’s take some action to do the decommission!

• Select the old platform service controller
• Hit the button Decommission PSC

Precheck has been started

Virtual machine has been powered-off and the vCenter server will be rebooted

After the reboot, you can additional check if the server has been removed from the web interface

All done!