Deploying VCSA6.5 on VMware Distributed Switches (DVSwitches)

In one of my labs all the hosts and VMs are on the VMware distributed switch to mimic one of the production environment. When I planned for the upgrade from vSphere 5.5 to 6.5 in that lab and started deploying the VCSA 6.5 using the .iso image - I came across this.

So, VMware doesn't support distributed switches with non-ephemeral port group when deploying the VCSA and PSC on 6.5. I read few articles and most of them suggested to migrate your vCenter 5.5 to Standard switch as well as build the new VCSA 6.5 on standard switch for smooth migration.

But what if environment is 100% on distributed switch and going back and creating standard switch is not an option. Well, there is a work around to get past this screen. You will need to create a port group on distributed switch with "ephemeral binding".

Once you create that port group on the distributed switch, all the VLANs/port groups from that distributed switch would show up and you can deploy the VCSA on the distributed switches. As you see in below screenshot - I have created one port group with suffix ephemeral and now I can see all my VLANs/Port groups in the view for the selection of the network.

It may not be recommended way from the VMware to build the VCSA6.5 appliance but that is the way to snick in if you have everything on distributed switch.

Another way - if you want to create just VCSA 6.5 with embedded PSC is using OVA file that is in the VCSA installer folder. So, instead of using the installer.exe (Located under - vcsa-ui-installer\win32) file for install use the .ova (Located under vcsa folder) to deploy the appliance. Once the appliance is deployed - you can use https://VCSAIP Address:5480 to get the option to configure, upgrade or migrate the vCenter.

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