NSX-T Migrating from N-VDS to VDS: The Zeal of The LAB

Based on my previous blog post my lab’s pHosts are now on NSX-T 3.0, however, everything is on N-VDS, and it’s obvious that I needed to migrate to the new VDS on version 7.x.

Each pHost has:

• 2 NICs connected to 1Gbps ports for management [Standard vSwitch].
• 2 NICs connected to 1Gbps ports for workload communication [vDS].
• 2 NICs connected to 10Gbps ports for workload communication [N-VDS].

VMKernels:

• Management on the Standard vSwitch.
• vMotion on the N-VDS as VLAN Segment.
• NFS on the N-VDS as a VLAN Segment.

In the lab, the easier way could be to just rip everything apart and do it from scratch, however, the lab isn’t there for the easy stuff ;-), we’re simulating production activities!

In a production environment (hence my lab too %)) we need to take into consideration the following:

• The activity needs to be controlled.
• No downtime (or at least a planned SLA bound one).
• Rollback/Revert-back.
• The time required for starting and finishing the activity (which will be the maintenance window).

The iteration of the migration goes as follows in this first attempt of a mindmap+infographic thing =).