Move a Virtual Machine to a Different vCenter Server System

You can migrate a virtual machine from one vCenter Server system to another by using Cross vCenter Server vMotion.

You can move virtual machines between vCenter Server systems of vSphere version 6.0 and later by using the Move-VM cmdlet. When you move a virtual machine from one vCenter Server system to another, only datastores are supported as storage destinations.

Procedure

1. Connect to the myVC1 source vCenter Server system.

   Connect-VIServer 'myVC1' -Username MyUser1 -Password MyPass1

2. Connect to the myVC2 destination vCenter Server system.

   Connect-VIServer 'myVC2' -Username MyUser2 -Password MyPass2

3. Store the MyVM virtual machine, its network adapters, the destination host, port group, and datastore in variables.

   $vm = Get-VM 'myVM' -Location 'myVMhostOnVC1'
   $destination = Get-VMHost 'MyVMhostOnVc2'
   $networkAdapter = Get-NetworkAdapter -VM $vm
   $destinationPortGroup = Get-VDPortgroup -VDSwitch 'myVDSwitchOnVC2' -Name 'myPortGroup'
   $destinationDatastore = Get-Datastore 'MyDatastoreOnVc2'

4. Migrate the virtual machine to the specified destination host and datastore and attach the virtual machine network adapters to the destination port group.

    Move-VM -VM $vm -Destination $destination -NetworkAdapter $networkAdapter -PortGroup $destinationPortGroup -Datastore $destinationDatastore