I've inherited a vcenter 4.1 environment with 6 esxi hosts. The vcenter server resides on a physical 2008 R2 server running a 2005 SQL express db on the same box. I've got around 80 VMS, 65ish or so are production servers. With this many vms and hosts I'm worried the current express db and even the 2008 express bundle on an upgrade are going to start having problems. We will be adding a few more hosts in the near future for some projects as well. What I would like to do is build a SQL 2008R2 server to house the database on a separate VM and build a new vcenter 5.1 server on a separate vm. This vm would contain the SSO and its default db, the inventory server and the vcenter server (attached to the new SQL 2008R2 server). I know I can take backups of the dbs on the existing vcenter and import the data to the new sql server as I've already done that successfully in testing. I've successfully installed SSO and Inventory on a new vm, but I get a certificate error that says my certs don't exist even though they do. it dawned on me that the certs copied over from the existing vcenter server are built with the name of the existing vcenter server and I'm trying to do a test install on a server by another name. So my plan is this:
1. Shutdown vcenter server service
2. Take all my necessary db backups, vcdb, umdb, adam, and certs, and move them to a network share
3. Import my dbs on the sql server
4. power down the existing vcenter server
5. remote to my new vcenter vm and rename it to the old vcenter name and give the old vcenter's IP address
6. copy the certs to the proper location
7. start the install of vcenter 5.1 and install sso, inventory, and vcenter on the new vm and point vcenter to the new sql server.
8. once working I'd enable HA for the new vcenter VM and the sql server.
Will this plan even work or am I going about this the wrong way or should I just do the in place upgrade? What I don't want is obviously things to go BOOM! This is a county hospital environment.