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You are here: Home / Automation / How to tell if your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) was migrated from a Windows vCenter Server?

How to tell if your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) was migrated from a Windows vCenter Server?

09.19.2016 by William Lam // 2 Comments

In case you had not heard, last week VMware had officially released the VCSA Migration Tool which is included in the new vSphere 6.0 Update 2m release. Customers can now easily migrate from a Windows based vCenter Server over to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) all while preserving their existing vCenter Server configurations and integrations. For more details, I highly recommend you check out all the links and resources here related to the VCSA Migration Tool.

One interesting question that came up over the weekend from a troubleshooting standpoint was how do you tell if your VCSA was migrated from a Windows vCenter Server? Besides remembering 😉 there is actually a pretty simple way to check by looking at the install parameters as I have previously written about here. To do so, you will need to SSH to your VCSA and enable the Bash Shell first. Once that has been done, go ahead and run the following command:

install-parameter upgrade.source.platform

If your VCSA was migrated from a Windows based vCenter Server using the new VCSA Migration Tool, you should see a value of windows. If you do not get any results, then it means the VCSA was not migrated and it was freshly deployed as an appliance.

In addition, you can also check whether or not you had migrated over the original vCenter Server's Stats, Events and Tasks (SET) data. To do so, run the following command:

install-parameter upgrade.user.options

You should get back a value of either yes or no for migrating over the SET data.

Lastly, if your VCSA was migrated from a Windows based vCenter Server, you can even tell if the migration was done so using the UI or CLI. To do so, run the following command:

install-parameter upgrade.silent

You should get back a value of either True for a CLI-based migration or False for a UI-based migration.

Here is a quick screenshot of running the three commands on a VCSA that was migrated.
how-to-check-if-vcsa-was-migrated-from-windows

More from my site

  • Windows Server 2012 fix is out for the VCS to VCSA Migration Fling!
  • Handy tidbits & workarounds for the VCS to VCSA Migration Fling
  • Tech Preview of Windows VC to VCSA Migration at VMworld
  • vCommunity "shorts" on their experiences w/the VCSA Migration
  • Few #migrate2vcsa VMworld sessions & HOL worth checking out

Categories // Automation, VCSA Tags // install-parameter, migrate2vcsa, migration, vcenter server appliance, vcsa, vcva

Comments

  1. vikrant says

    10/06/2016 at 8:37 am

    It was really a big challenge for me to migrate a vCenter Server from Windows based vCenter Server to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) but with the help of this VCSA migration tool I have successfully migrated my vcenter server from Windows based vCenter Server to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and After the migration I checked the value of window and it was showing the result that mean my migration has successfully completed. .Thank you

    Reply
  2. Nelson Vieira says

    11/08/2016 at 6:53 pm

    Same here! I used it before it became and "official" tool. Had a few bumps and bruises along the way but William and crew was awesome at helping me figure it out. Love this site!

    Reply

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Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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