I really like vCOPS, as it makes my life easier. I can easily run a stress reports and show undersize/oversize percentages within a VM, among other cool reports.

Anyway, I’m migration most of my vCenters from 5.1 to 5.5, and I opted to create new vCenters since the “old” 5.1 vCenter have been in-place upgraded since 4.5. I know, I’m not a fan of in-place upgrades either. Migrating VMs from VC to VC is easy enough. Just attach the storage to both vCenters and remove from inventory from the source vCenter, then register the VMs by right clicking the .vmx file and register VM, or add to inventory depending on what flavor of UI you are using.

To migrate the vCOPS vApp, we need to remember a few key points that are important. An IP Pool is required for vCOPS. The vCOPS vApp holds critical information such as the IP addresses of the UI and analytics VM as well as the timezone and start order among other settings. Moving the vCOPS VMs is pretty straight forward, but how about the vApp?

Moving vCOPS to a new vCenter is actually really easy. You could export the entire vApp to an OVF or OVA and then import it to the vCenter. While this is the method I’ll be describing it takes quite some time to export your vCOPS VMs and it is an unnecessary space requirement in my opinion. To quickly move vCOPS do the following:

• Write down the timezone and IP addresses under the vApp properties
• Shutdown your vApp
• Remove vCOPS VMs from inventory and register them in the new vCenter
• Next you need to export your vApp to an OVF template
  • If you try to do this now, it will fail because there is no known network as described within the vApp, since the vApp has no VMs with network interfaces.
  • Just create a dummy VM as a placeholder within the same network as the other vCOPS VMs, and use thin provisioning so you don;t waste any storage.
  • This will allow you to export the vApp
• Once you have exported the vApp. Import it into the new vCenter
• Add the “migrated” vCOPS VMs into this vApp
• Remove the dummy VM
• And you are done… Well, not quite yet.
• Remember the vCOPS requires the IP Pool aka (Network Protocol Profile)
• So create a new IP Pool in the new vCenter and you should now be able to bring up your migrated vCOPS environment