What’s New in vSphere 7.0 – Changing vCenter PNID

Earlier in vSphere 6.0 Days, we have seen a scenario where if a Big Organisation acquires a company and later tries to integrate its IT infrastructure to theirs. They face the issue where they cannot rename the vCenter Servers to change their Domain Network to their own. Due to these issues, IT admins had to rebuild the vCenter server from scratch and move the workload.

For More insight on Changing vCenter PNID please refer to https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2130599

 

But now not anymore !!

With the Changes introduced in vSphere 6.7 Update 3 continued to be supported in vSphere 7.0 where an IT administrator can change the PNID and merge the Existing workload to their network without any issues.

 

What is PNID:

The PNID is equal to the System Name parameter input during deployment. The System Name can either be a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) or an IP address. For example, a system name could be vcenter.corp.local or 10.10.100.50 which would also then become the PNID. This PNID is locked in and cannot be changed after deployment on versions before 6.7 Update 3.

 

To verify the current PNID, run the following command in vCenter Server Appliance :

#/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/vmafd-cli get-pnid --server-name localhost

 

You change the PNID in the following situations:

  • The potential network configuration changes in vSphere infrastructure.
  • The domain name changes as the result of an organization change such as a merger, split or branch out.

The advantages of allowing the user to change the PNID are:

  • Doesn’t require additional Platform Services Controller or vCenter Server instances to be deployed.
  • Minimum downtime (~15 mins).
  • No loss of SSO Data.
  • Easy recovery from failures.

You can use the vCenter Server Appliance management interface to change Hostname (system name) .

Changing vCenter PNID

 

PNID Change Considerations

 

When Changing the PNID Make sure you have followed the recommendations:

  • Destroy vCenter Server High Availability
  • Unregister solutions (Site Recovery Manager, vRealize Operations Manager, Log insight etc)

After changing the PNID :

  • Configure vCenter Server High Availability
  • Register the solutions (Site Recovery Manager, vRealize Operations Manager, Log insight etc)
  • Regenerate custom certificates after PNID change, because the certificates will be reset to VMCA certificates.
  • Add vCenter Server again to the Active Directory if it was configured with AD before PNID change
  • Recreate Hybrid Link with Cloud vCenter Server if this vCenter Server was connected to the Cloud vCenter Server

 

Prerequisite:

Before changing the PNID, make sure that you have taken a Backup or Snapshot of the vCenter Appliance as the only resolution to revert the change in case of failure os the restore of Backup/Snapshot. 

Troubleshoot:

Logs can be reviewed from the below location for Troubleshooting.

Log : pnid_change.log
Log location : /var/log/vmware/applmgmt/pnid_change.log

 

For More details on the vSphere 7.0 Series please refer to: https://knowitlikepro.com/category/vmware/whats-new-in-vsphere-7-0/

Ashutosh Dixit

I am currently working as a Senior Technical Support Engineer with VMware Premier Services for Telco. Before this, I worked as a Technical Lead with Microsoft Enterprise Platform Support for Production and Premier Support. I am an expert in High-Availability, Deployments, and VMware Core technology along with Tanzu and Horizon.

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