How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address?

By | January 13, 2017

Recently, I have had to change IP addresse of some vCenter Appliances (VCSA) 6.0 U2 in our environment. Changing IP address is possible (however officially not supported) and it's straightforward if you deployed VCSA correctly - using FQDN. If you deploy VCSA using IP address as FQDN, you can not change IP address.

To change IP address of VCSA 6.x you need to follow the below steps:

  1. Log in to VCSA using SSH (if you do not know/remember the root password please follow this guide to reset it) and modify /etc/hosts.How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 8change IP address and save by wq! (vi editor basics available here).How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 7
  2. Modify A record on your DNS server to point to a new IP address.
  3. Log in to VCSA via VAMI (https://VCSA_ip:5480/) using root account and change IP address to a new one.How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 1
    Click Networking and then Edit:How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 1Type a new IP address and click OK to save.
    How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 3
  4. Reboot VCSA via VAMI or SSH (reboot). Via VAMI, please click Summary and then Reboot:How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 4
  5. Wait when vCenter Appliance is restarted and services are running (e.g. Web Client). It needs some minutes to be completed.

It's really important to deploy vCenter Appliance (VCSA) using FQDN, no IP Address. If you go to VAMI and click Networking amd then Edit:How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 5you can notice that FQDN is not possible to be changed. It's greyed (yellow on my screen) 🙂How to change vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x IP Address 6

Update 12.2016: Changing IP address is supported since VCSA 6.5.

Author: Mariusz

Architect (~ 15 years experience based on passion...) with strong background as a System Administrator and Engineer. Focused on Data Center Solutions: Virtualization/Cloud Computing and Storage/Backup Systems. Currently living in Poland.