Moving vCenter’s SQL server database to another vm

When working with vCenter I prefer to have it and the SQL server it points to virtualized. Occasionally I find that someone installs vCenter and SQL on the same vm. I like to keep SQL located on a separate vm so they aren’t competing for resources.  It’s a fairly easy process to move the database to another server but there are some gotchas I discovered in vCenter 5.0.

Doing a search of the VMware KB I came across the following:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=7960893&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=274595360&stateId=0%200%20274597271

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1004382

Looking at those two articles it appears that they should work for vCenter 5.0. However, I discovered that those articles didn’t quite cover everything. There are several other SQL jobs that are needed for vCenter 5.0 that aren’t mentioned. I found another KB article that listed all of the SQL jobs for vCenter 5.0.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2006097&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=274595903&stateId=0%200%20274599304

After creating all of the jobs everything should work except for the performance overview charts. The performance overview charts use Tomcat and rely on a JDBC connection to the database instead of the ODBC DSN. There is a file in %ProgramData%\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter called vcdb.properties that needs to be modified to point to the new SQL location. The line to be modified in my case looked like this.

 url=jdbc:sqlserver://localhost

It just needs to be changed to point to your new sql server name.

url=jdbc:sqlserver://myservername

That’s all there is to it. Hopefully VMware will clarify their KB articles a bit and add the JDBC info as well.