A bit of backgound.
We had a pair of closely coupled sites, all controlled from single instance of vCenter Server (4.1). We expanded and added another remote site. At the time the only option was to control that new cluster from the primary site (the backhaul network is fast enough), as we only had a single vCenter license.
Since then we have upgraded vCenter to 5.0 and increase the number of licenses we have for vCenter. We want to move to a dual vCenter setup so we can fully utilise the Site DR manager and increase seperation and resiliance between the sites.
The second vCenter Server instance installed fine, and set up with linked mode, with no issues.
I can disconnect a standalone host from original vCenter Server and add to new vCenter server without impacting any running VMs.
However the problem is that I have a cluster (with distributed virtual switch) which is physically situated at the second site, but has been up and running, controlled by the primary site vCenter. I cannot disconnect and reconnect hosts to new vCenter instance as the vdSwitch is in use.
Since you don't appear to vMotion individual VMs between different vCenter servers, then what is the best way to migrate the cluster, with no or minimal downtime to the running VMs?