Reinstalling a vCenter Server

Here is the link to the KB article on how to prepare before re-creating your vCenter:

http://www.zerto.com/myzerto/knowledge-base/recover-zvr-installation/

In your case, if you have already re-created your vCenter server and created a brand new database, you will need to uninstall Zerto Virtual Manager as well as the VRAs. The VRAs will need to be deleted manually from the vCenter clients. If the VRAs were used to house recovered VMs, I would make sure that no VMDKs are mounted on them before deleting them from disk. Then a new installation of Zerto will be required.

Now, if you re-used the same vCenter DB, you should be able to run the Zerto Diagnostic Utility on the ZVM server and point to the new vCenter via the re-configuration tool.

“Now, if you re-used the same vCenter DB, you should be able to run the Zerto Diagnostic Utility on the ZVM server and point to the new vCenter via the re-configuration tool.”

That’s what support told me when I asked about replacing vCenter servers. However, this did not work. Even though I retained the database, once Zerto was re-pointed to the new vCenter servers, Zerto ZVM service started to crash every time I tried to connected to the management GUI. Support checked the logs and told me that the reason the service is crashing is because the UUID for the vCenter server had changed. Yeah, no kidding; New vCenter, new UUID. I ended up having to rebuild my entire Zerto environment. That was not happy day.

Make sure you back up your current Zerto confg (XML file) so that if you end up having to rebuild your environment, you will be able to quickly recreate/import all the VPG’s.