Perform a CLI Migration of vCenter Server from Windows to an Appliance

You can migrate vCenter Server to an appliance from a machine that is in your vSphere network.

Prerequisites

See Prerequisites for Migrating vCenter Server
Create a snapshot of the deployment that you want to migrate as a precaution in case of failure during the migration process.
Download the installer ISO file from the VMware website to a machine that is in your vSphere network. The installer ISO filename is VMware-VCSA-all-7.0.0-yyyyyy.iso, where yyyyyy is the build number. See Download and Mount the vCenter Server Installer.
Prepare JSON Configuration Files for CLI Migration.
Run a Pre-Check Before a CLI Migration to vCenter Server Appliance to identify problems and refine your migration plan.
Review the optional arguments for running the migration. See Syntax of the CLI Migrate Command.

Navigate to the software CLI installer directory for your operating system.
- If you are deploying the appliance from a machine with Windows OS, navigate to the vcsa-cli-installer\win32 directory.
- If you are deploying the appliance from a machine with Linux OS, navigate to the vcsa-cli-installer/lin64 directory.
- If you are deploying the appliance from a machine with Mac OS, navigate to the vcsa-cli-installer/mac directory.
Select the CLI installer: vcsa-deploy.exe.
Run the migration command.
```
vcsa-deploy migrate --accept-eula optional_arguments path_to_the_json_file
```
The optional_arguments variable is a space-separated list of optional arguments to set additional configurations.
For example, you can set the location of the log and other output files that the installer generates.
```
vcsa-deploy migrate --accept-eula --log-dir=path_to_the_location path_to_the_json_file
```