How to Re-IP a vCloud Director Cell

There’s been a comment on the vExpert Slack asking about how to Re-IP a VCD (vCloud Director) cell. Here’s a rough method to carry out the task.

The basic method would be to:

• Log into the VCD Cell in question that needs to be re-IP’d
• Enter ‘service vmware-vcd stop’
• On the Database Server for the vCloud Director cells log into the SQL Manager session with an account with edit rights on the vCloud database
• Open up a new query window and select the vCloud Director database as the target of the script
• Execute the following SQL statements:

select name from cells;

update cells set primary_ip=’<new-cell-ip-address>’ where name=’<name-of-the-cell>’;

• Back on the vCloud Director Cells navigate into the $VCLOUD_HOME/etc directory and change the following values in the global.properties file:

‘vcloud.cell.ip.primary’ – Change it to the new primary IP address

‘consoleproxy.host.https’ – Change it to the new console proxy IP address

‘vcloud.cell.ips’ – Change both the IPs in the field appropriately

• Change the IP address of the VM via whatever means the OS requires & update DNS records
• When the VM has been successfully re-IP’d then start the VCD service on the cell with the command:

‘service vmware-vcd start’

PS: Be careful with any SSL certs that have IP’s embedded as Subject Alternative Names (SAN). You may need to generate new SSL certs and replace the existing ones if needs be.