You can use the CLI installer to automatically migrate a vCenter Server or Platform Services Controller from Windows to an appliance.

The installer ISO file contains example templates of JSON files that contain the minimum configuration parameters required for migrating a vCenter Server or Platform Services Controller instance from Windows to an appliance. The example templates are located in the vcsa-cli-installer/templates/migrate directory.

Note: Before migrating a vCenter Server deployment with an external Platform Services Controller, you must first converge the external Platform Services Controller to an embedded Platform Services Controller and then perform the migration. See Knowledge Base article KB 68137.

CLI tasks for migrating your vCenter Server installation from Windows to an appliance:

  1. Download and Mount the vCenter Server Installer.
  2. Download and Run VMware Migration Assistant on the Source Windows Machine.
  3. Prepare JSON Configuration Files for CLI Migration.
  4. Run the precheck before performing the migration.
  5. Perform a CLI Migration of vCenter Server from Windows to an Appliance.

You can run the CLI installer multiple times with different JSON files to perform multiple CLI migrations, or you can run the CLI migrations concurrently in a batch mode.

Important: The user name that you use to log in to the machine from which you want to run the CLI installer, the path to the vCenter Server appliance installer, the path to your JSON configuration file, and the string values in your JSON configuration file, including the passwords, must contain only ASCII characters. Extended ASCII and non-ASCII characters are unsupported.