Ensure that you have the necessary credentials, and that you complete any necessary cleanup or other preparation before migrating your Oracle database from Windows to an embedded PostgreSQL database in the appliance.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have confirmed basic interoperability before preparing your Oracle database for migration.

Verify that you have backed up your database. For information about backing up the vCenter Server database, see the Oracle documentation.

Procedure

  1. Verify that passwords are current and not set to expire soon.
  2. Ensure that you have login credentials, the database name, and the database server name that the vCenter Server database is to use.
    Look in the ODBC system for the connection name of the database source name for the vCenter Server database.
  3. Use the Oracle SERVICE_NAME instead of SID to verify that your Oracle database instance is available.
    • Log in to the database server to read from the alert log: $ORACLE_BASE/diag/rdbms/$instance_name/$INSTANCE_NAME/trace/alert_$ INSTANCE_NAME.log.
    • Log in to the database server to read from the Oracle Listener status output.
    • If you have the SQL*Plus client installed, you can use tnsping for the vCenter Database instance. If the tnsping command does not work the first time, retry it after waiting a few minutes. If retrying does not work, restart the vCenter Database instance on the Oracle server and then retry tnsping to ensure it is available.
  4. Verify that the JDBC driver file is included in the CLASSPATH variable.
  5. Verify that permissions are set correctly.
  6. Either assign the DBA role or grant the required permissions to the user.
  7. For vCenter Server 5.5, run the cleanup script.
    1. Locate the cleanup_orphaned_data_Oracle.sql script in the ISO image and copy it to the Oracle server.
    2. Log in to a SQL*Plus session with the vCenter Server database account.
    3. Run the cleanup script.
      @path/cleanup_orphaned_data_Oracle.sql

    The cleanup process purges unnecessary and orphaned data that is not used by any vCenter Server component.

  8. Make a full backup of the vCenter Server database.

Results

Your database is prepared for the vCenter Server migration to vCenter Server Appliance.