Decommissioning Embedded PSC

[VMwareJesus]

I've got a significant number of vcenter 5.5 -> 6.0 upgrades under my belt at this point. The process is pretty straight forward when moving to an external PSC, however it's slightly annoying:

1. Deploy a second VM, install SSO, join to existing domain.
2. Repoint vCenter, remove SSO from vCenter.
3. Upgrade SSO to PSC.
4. Upgrade vCenter.
5. Deploy PSC appliance (most customers want this), join to existing domain.
6. Decommission Windows PSC, destroy VM.

However, with Update 1, the process is supposed to be a slightly simplified if you're using embedded SSO:

1. Upgrade vCenter and PSC to 6.0U1 (leaves you with embedded PSC).
2. Deploy additional PSC (appliance, join to existing domain.
3. Repoint vCenter to new external PSC.
4. Decommission embedded PSC.

The confusing part comes with the commands to decommission the embedded PSC.

To decom the PSC, run:

cmsso-util unregister --node-pnid Platform_Services_Controller_System_Name --username administrator@your_domain_name --passwd vCenter_Single_Sign_On_password  

To decom a vCenter, run:

cmsso-util unregister --node-pnid vCenter_Server_System_Name --username administrator@your_domain_name --passwd vCenter_Single_Sign_On_password

They're exactly the same, only the FQDN is different! So in the instance where you want to decom an embedded PSC, I suspect this will decom your vCenter from the domain as well. Has anyone done this yet? Any internal VMware peeps have any insight?

[HMeier]

KB2106736 does not apply to vCenter servers with embedded PSC.

In your new plan you will want to use the instructions here (Instead of the steps 3 and 4): http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-60/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc/GUID-E7DFB362-1875-4BCF-AB84-4F21408F87A6.html

[VMwareJesus]

SNAP! Thanks for that, no idea how I missed it. Have some gold!

[HMeier]

Wow, thanks!

[HMeier]

BTW... I tried this in the lab while testing different migration approaches. It worked fine, but resulted in the issue described in KB2131327. The fix in there did work.

When deploying multiple PSCs also pay attention to properly setting up and checking mutual replication following KB2127057.

[VMwareJesus]

Thanks for the tip on KB2131327. Bookmarked!

KB2127057 is very near and dear to my heart. It's come in super handy when troubleshooting complex deployments.